


astrophilia

by kittenscully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: (more related to religion than time period), Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Period Typical Bigotry, Porn with Feelings, Romance, not a high school AU even though they're in high school for part of it, religion-related angst, scully centric, what circumstances would cause dana scully to grow up hating her catholic upbringing?, what circumstances would cause her to hate her cross?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24665506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenscully/pseuds/kittenscully
Summary: Winter has always been the season closest to Dana’s heart anyway, coldness settled into the space between air and rushing blood. Silence settled behind her teeth, keeping house on her tongue.[in which Dana's cross is a burden, but her lover is not.]
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 44
Kudos: 183





	1. Prologue

_June 12th, 1982_

On the morning of the final day, Dana lays out the pieces of newly-bought white fabric, pearl and lace on the quilt. Assembled, they’re disjointed, fragments of a body split and limp. The antithesis of wholeness and practicality, of the moving tendons growing from her wrist to her elbow and her elbow to her back.

It is in silence that she puts them on, one by one. A stocking, rolled up past the knee, ready to tear against her strong thigh. The garters, slid up skin thick with gooseflesh. One elastic band, then another, settled onto the shoulders she keeps slender and pale. Small breasts nestled into rounded cups frayed with lace, eggshell fragments cool and dead against her skin. 

She thinks in contrast of the soft, living palms of his hands, presses the heels of her own into her flesh in a weak imitation, and aches. Soon, she won’t have to ache any longer.

The gown she’s meant to wear hangs in the closet, beside the pencilled ladder of marks on the doorframe, one for each year with a matching date in her mother’s handwriting — _2/23/68, 2/23/69, 2/23/70,_ on and on and on, the extent of her whole life mapped out in five feet and two inches worth of space. The room has been hers since she was a child, and she grew out of it long before she finally turned eighteen, even though nobody but Mulder bothered to notice. The room where her parents would have her go would be smaller still, occupied with two bodies rather than one, and as she stares around at the four walls, she is positive that it would not hold the expanses he’s told her are beneath her skin. 

Her figure is elegant in the mirror, but her body looks unfamiliar, too simple and slender to contain the wild thing she’s seen over her shoulder in the reflection on his dashboard, in the glow of his headlight eyes looking up at her when she turns back and cradles his head between her forearms. Blinking, she tries to identify with the girl in the wedding-night-negligee, in the cross and ring and untouched sanctity of skin. All she can see is a poor, pale imitation, a wraith of the real thing which still rides flushed with desire and laughter in his driver’s seat, in his nest of Mexican blankets, in his lap. 

When she walks downstairs to feign resignation and virginal nervousness under the dead gazes of her family, her mother will pinch her cheeks in place of rouge, and her father will kiss them. She will not feel warm. She has not felt warm in this numb white house for a very long time. 

But the bruise on her hip from last night is hot, flushed blue and red and full of promises from his beautiful mouth. When she covers it with her fingers, it’s a secret, a carefully sheltered candle flame to guide her way, a promise of escape into a world of animated color and endless sky, breaths gasped and released instead of held still and shameful. 

The cross around her neck is a chill, gravestone weight, and she steps closer to the mirror as always to reassure herself that it is still gold, deceptively delicate as ever. She will leave it on her quilt, in lieu of a note. Her mother won’t understand, but by the time she finds it, Dana will be crossing the state line with the thrice-memorized map of Mulder’s hand under hers, the weight of her sins left behind to bleed out like roadkill over miles of Kansas highway. 

She’ll leave the ring in the heaps of golden chain. Her not-future-husband can keep it as he’d wanted to keep her, in a pretty box next to the bible in his bedside table.

Slipping into her robe, she takes three deep breaths of stale air to prepare herself, counts them among the last that will not taste like freedom. Behind her, the wedding dress is white as a ghost. She will not wear it. She isn’t ready to die, and cannot imagine that she ever will be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As suggested by the tags, this came to be when I asked myself what kind of circumstances could've resulted in a Dana Scully who hated the faith she was raised with. Dana was born in the year she was in canon, Mulder is a few years younger than in canon. I'll post the ensuing chapters over the next series of days. The dates are important, since the format is vignettes, rather than a continuous narrative.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @kittenscully, where this will also be posted. I'd love to hear what anyone and everyone thought.


	2. Spring

_March 2nd, 1981_

The warming of the air as the seasons start to change leaves Dana anxious. Her pale complexion loves to redden in the heat, and her skin collects beads of sweat like a magpie hunting down jewelry, beneath the heavy curtain of her hair, in the hollow of her palms, under the conservative clothing that’s too warm for springtime. 

She’s always been afraid that if she sheds it too early, her father will know that she’s never wanted to wear it in the first place. Surely, the need to slough off her skin, snakelike, and be something more would be as clear as river water if she wasn’t so thoroughly covered. The list of little disobediences, crimes against God her father, must be written on her bare skin, plain for him to see: _and here is where she took His name in vain, and here is where she did not want to become an obedient wife, and here is where she touched herself for the first time and cried into her pillow from the shame of feeling something. Here is where she did not confess and carried her guilt like a precious secret too many times to count._

The hallways of the local high school are never cool enough this soon in the year. It’s as if the growing heat creeps in, insidious and invasive, until Dana’s cross sticks to her chest like a curse. And as the weather grows nicer and her classmates get rowdier, she gets quieter, wishing for the solace of January as they pass in laughing herds and leave her hiding against her locker.

Winter has always been the season closest to Dana’s heart anyway, coldness settled into the space between air and rushing blood. Silence settled behind her teeth, keeping house on her tongue. _Here is where she fell asleep in Mass at seven years old and her mother pinched her hard enough to bruise so you would not see and look disappointed, and here is where she sat pin straight and quiet at attention and you looked disappointed anyway._

“It’s like they don’t even see me,” a voice comments, cutting into her thoughts, and she turns. “You’d think I’d have stopped being disappointed by that at this point.”

It’s him, the boy who’d come from up north, an unfamiliar transplant stitched uncomfortably into their small town world of thoroughly known things. _Mulder,_ she recalls. The name had bounced around from household to household when his family arrived, growing heavier to carry the weight of the scandal when they hadn’t shown up to mass that Sunday, or any of the ones that followed. 

She’s heard all sorts of talk since, about his family’s heritage, about his wealthy parents, about his sister shipped off to boarding school in England immediately upon moving to town, either because of allegedly deviant behavior, or because the Mulders, with their holier-than-thou attitudes, thought her too good for the humble schools of Providence, Kansas. The gossips aren’t clear about that last point, but they’re disdainful about both options.

The remaining Mulder child, from what Dana’s heard – not that she’s been paying remarkably close attention to the rumors – is already eighteen, and not a child at all. And right now, he’s standing in front of her, his shoulder is shoved against the locker where he’d landed after the bustle of the crowd passed.The line of his nose is strong and smart, and the line of his jaw is stronger. Dana can’t tear her eyes away from the way his throat moves as he swallows. 

“They don’t know you,” she says finally, in a murmur, fiddling with the sleeve of her sweater. After so much silence, her voice is unfamiliar to her own ears.

“They must not know you then, either.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

She hadn’t meant to be so honest. For a moment, she’s positive that it was a mistake, but then, his full lips quirk into a smile, and the glint in his pale eyes is as bright as the sun. Her cheeks must flush, but for once, she doesn’t mind the feeling, or the creeping of the warmth down her chest that accompanies it. 

“You’re from here,” he observes, as if that isn’t the case for everyone except him.

“You’re not.”

“I am now.” He shrugs, not appearing thrilled by the fact. “Think they’ll start recognizing me after a few weeks?”

“I doubt it,” she replies immediately. “You’re too different.”

He doesn’t _feel_ different, not to her. But that concept is outlandish, and she doesn’t even consider trying to voice it, much less thinking it through. Regardless, it’s inevitable that the rest of the people populating the building and the town will continue to see him as unfathomably, irredeemably different, and, after all, he hadn’t asked about her personal feelings. 

“Thank you.” If he knows that she’s keeping something from him, he doesn’t show it, a roguish grin taking over his face.

“You don’t want them to recognize you anyway,” Dana says, keeping her mouth unaffected despite his undeniable charm. “They’ll drag you down with them.”

“Are they dragging you down?”

The question is surprisingly probing, considering it’s the first time they’ve spoken. But there’s something inquisitive and trustworthy about the earnest edges of his face, childish and gentle, that makes her want to clasp him to her chest and keep him there. 

“I’m more concerned with whether I’ll ever be able to drag my way out,” she says. She isn’t sure she could lie to him outright if she wanted to. “When you’re born in a place like this, it’s hard to be anything but trapped.”

“I don’t buy that.” A shake of his head. He’s inspecting her the way she imagines she has done him. “I grew up around people who couldn’t find their way out of an open doorway, for all the worldliness they were raised with.” 

He seems perfectly serious, even though he’s smiling still, and the intensity of his gaze makes her sure he can see all the way into the center of her chest. Dana swallows, tilts her head inquisitively, and pretends that there’s nothing hiding there for him to see. _And here is where she thought of him instead of Him, and here is where she observed closely something other than the Sabbath. Here is where she wanted to be observed, and here is where she didn’t feel guilty for it, not even a little bit._

“It’s not the place,” he shrugs. “That’s way too small, too circumstantial. It’s the people and their potentiality. Fate over nature, nature over nurture. We’re cosmic, you know? We’re all stardust.”

“Stardust,” she says, raising an eyebrow. It sounds like one of the fantastical ideas Melissa would’ve come up with when they were children. 

“What, too dramatic?”

She laughs, utterly despite herself. “And here I was, believing my biology teacher about carbon based life.” 

“Where do you think carbon comes from?” Another question, another flash in his bright eyes. He seems to be full of both.

“You’re going to say stardust, I assume.”

“Clever,” he comments, and she feels her cheeks go pink. “Yes, stardust. Virtually every element on earth comes from the collisions of stars.”

“That may be true,” she says, instead of telling him that she’s already aware of the theory, that she spends too much free time hiding in the science section of the local library. “But it’s a huge leap to go from that fact to stating that we’re stardust.”

“Maybe,” he concedes. “But if one small step for a man is one giant leap for mankind, then what is one giant leap for a man?”

“Exactly what it says on the tin.”

It’s his turn to laugh, and she can’t help but smile when he does, warmed head to toe from the delighted look on his face as he stares at her.

“Speaking of which,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve formally met.”

“No, we haven’t,” she says, resisting the urge to tell him that she thinks she’s known him for a long, long time. Instead, she outstretches her hand. “I’m Dana Scully. But I try not to remind people who my father is.” 

“Mulder.” He takes her hand, and dips his head to brush his lips over her knuckles instead of shaking it, that charming grin still on his face. Her skin itches, crawls up and down her arms and her belly, weakens her to the core. She decides that the heat must’ve gotten to her, knows it’s a lie, and hopes her face hasn’t gone too thoroughly red. “Fox Mulder, to be precise. But you won’t catch me calling myself that. Regardless of what people might say, I don’t actually have a death wish.”

“Just Mulder, then,” she says, and if her tone is thicker and throatier than usual, she’s relatively sure that he doesn’t know her well enough to tell the difference. 

“Okay then, just Dana.” 

Her fingers are still clasped in his, and as their eye contact stretches from a brief moment into a longer one, she can’t help but remember the word he had used, before his rambling about stardust. Potentiality. A reaction, waiting to happen. What a person could become, or what two people could become. 

“You should go out with me tonight,” he says, his voice low and significant, as if he’s letting her in on one of the great secrets of the universe. 

Before she can even think it through, Dana is nodding. He looks taken aback, and she wonders, for a moment, if she responded too quickly – she barely knows him, and she will have to keep this from her family, and she hadn’t even asked where he wanted to take her. Perhaps he hadn’t even meant the offer seriously. But then, before she can kick herself, he moves a step closer, that same sweet, delighted expression spreading across his features. And as his looming nearness makes something deep inside her melt, she is suddenly sure that she will never regret going anywhere with him. _And here is where she looked up, starstruck, but not in search of God or Heaven._

He thumbs over the back of her hand insistently, like rubbing away frost from a windowpane, and she thinks that she may wind up liking spring after all.

*

_March 31st, 1981_

There isn’t a sound before the door handle turns, and that’s how Dana knows that it’s her sister. 

Her mother always starts with a short rap to the wood before bursting in without invitation. Before he left, Bill would announce himself with a bellow of her name eerily reminiscent of their father. Charlie knocks three or four times, always so tentative and unsure of himself. But the room used to be Melissa’s, too, and so she never bothers. 

Dana has exactly four seconds to stash the keychain under her pillow before the door is all the way open, and to sober her mouth to something more befitting her normal stoic state. 

It’s clear from the moment Melissa steps inside that she doesn’t buy it.

They sit together at the edge of Dana’s single bed as if they’re still friends, staring at its abandoned twin across the room, now scattered with childhood toys collecting dust. A stack of well-loved books sits at the foot, the ones that Dana still leafs through when she misses the way they were back then – _Little Town on the Prairie_ and _These Happy Golden Years,_ immortalized alongside the rest of the series in her mind with Missy as Mary and herself as Laura, set atop _Black Beauty_ and _Misty of Chincoteague_. 

Chewing on her lower lip, Dana counts the rips in her sister’s old quilt, the loose threads. Years ago, when Melissa had stopped being her confidant and started competing with her, she would point them out on a weekly basis, reminding Melissa and anyone else who would listen that she was the better, neater daughter. 

The idea is laughable, now. Pretty, docile, and perpetually capable of sitting still, Melissa’s got her beat by a mile in every category that matters, at least now that they’re young women. They’ve moved from competition to near-total lack of communication, and Dana doesn’t know which of them is responsible for that.

Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, Dana is practically waiting to have her face rubbed in it again. Melissa hasn’t said a word yet, her posture nervous and her eyes shifty, but Dana can’t imagine what else she’d be here for.

“How’s the boyfriend, Missy?” she asks, knowing full well that Melissa’s been ignoring his calls.

“Perfect,” Melissa bites back, her back stiffening, always ready for a fight. “How’s yours?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dana says flatly, glancing across Melissa’s lap to her pillow to ensure Mulder’s gift is safely hidden away.

She realizes her mistake immediately, but Melissa is already reaching underneath to fish it out. 

“Apollo 11,” Melissa reads, her lips pursed. “What’s this?”

“It’s a keychain,” Dana says, snatching the trinket back and folding it into her palm.

“I never would’ve guessed,” Melissa deadpans. “What’s his name?”

“Who?” 

Mulder had given it to her a week before, a reminder of that first time she’d made him laugh. _Turns out that asking you out minutes after meeting you was my giant leap,_ he’d told her, a cheeky grin on his face. _And I think it paid off_. She’d taken her own giant leap right then, by pulling him down and kissing him soundly for the first time. That one had paid off, too.

“We used to tell each other everything,” Melissa says, and there’s an edge of desperation in her voice. For a moment, Dana wonders if maybe, Melissa hadn’t come into her room to knock her down a few pegs, like she’d thought. 

After all, it was true – they had told each other everything, once. But back then, they’d had things in common, shared the desire to get out and make something of themselves. Now, Melissa conforms. She dates good Catholic boys like it’s her duty, and swats away their hands when they try to touch her. She cringes at mentions of sins of the flesh during the homily, rewarding Corinthians 6:18 with a wide eyed gasp and Leviticus 18:22 with an honest to goodness flinch. She isn’t the enclave of well kept secrets that Dana had once trusted, especially not now that there are real secrets to hide. 

“We don’t anymore.” Dana leaves it at that. 

Mulder is still friends with his sister, she recalls. They’d shipped her off far earlier than the rumors would claim, and she hasn’t come home for nearly two years now. She wonders whether they used to sit in the same bedroom, he and Samantha, like this, and whisper where their parents couldn’t hear. 

“We still could,” Melissa murmurs. 

Dana doesn’t reply, looping the keychain around her finger instead and feeling her cheeks flush at the memory of Mulder’s mouth on hers. He knows her, already, in a way that no one ever has – even if once upon a time, Melissa had come closest. Walking step in step with him, she feels as if she could go anywhere, be anything, and still be wholly understood when he fixes his gaze on her. 

She’s learned that there are certain types of relationships that ought exist in more than one form at the same time – daughters should be students to their parents, wives should be servants to their husbands, sisters should be accomplices and confessors to each other. Only recently has she realized that couples, partners, _lovers_ , should be the closest of friends. 

A few moments pass, and then Melissa stands up, her features schooled carefully into the tranquil expression that she always wears.

“I’m not going to tell anyone, you know,” she says, halfway to the door. “Whoever he is. I wouldn’t do that.”

“There isn’t anything to tell,” Dana lies. 

Melissa leaves as unobtrusively as she came, the door handle turning again, soundlessly, behind her. 

*

_April 8th 1981_

“Providence’s most unwanted speaking.”

“Mulder, it’s me.”

“Dana! What are you up to?”

“I’m doing homework.”

“Sure you are. What prompted you to dial my number on this fine Wednesday evening?”

“Do I need a reason to call you?”

“Of course not. I’ve been thinkin’ about you. But that’s nothing new.”

“Mulder…”

“What are you crunching on?”

“I snuck a bag of pretzels to my room.”

“How scandalous.”

“Don’t you mock me, _Fox_.”

“I would never.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“Homework.”

“Sure you are.”

“You got me. I’m reading _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_.”

“Again? Didn’t you just finish it last weekend?”

“Reading a book once is only satisfactory when the book isn’t any good, Dana.”

“Is that confined to novels, or are you also including scientific texts in that wide generalization?”

“Well, I’ve read my biology textbook twice. Does that answer your question?”

“Well, I didn’t ask how you managed to pass that particular course despite never doing your homework in time, so no.”

“Now who’s being mocked?”

“Don’t you have a photographic memory, anyway? Why would you need to read something twice?”

“Ah – _eidetic_ memory. And it’s inexact. It’s not like I can flip through a novel in my brain at will.”

“I wonder what the science is behind eidetic memory. If it’s even something that can be legitimately explained.”

“You would wonder that.”

“I wish they offered courses on things like neuroscience in high school. I know that memories are formed in the amygdala and the hippocampus, but I haven’t a clue about the actual processes behind it.”

“I love it when you talk scientific to me.”

“Don’t make me hang up on you, Mulder.”

“You know, I’ve got a book on my shelf that ostensibly proves that eidetic memory does exist.”

“Oh?”

“Yep.”

“Are you going to give me the title, or am I just expected to blindly believe?”

“Come on, Dana, don’t you trust me?”

“I’ve had enough people tell me to blindly believe for a lifetime, Mulder. There’s a reason I hate going to church.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

“There’s no book on your shelf that ostensibly proves the existence of eidetic memory, is there?”

“No. But there is a book on my shelf that ostensibly proves the existence of extraterrestrial life.”

“Very funny.”

“Also several that ostensibly prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster.”

“Right, and the bible on my mother’s bedside table proves the existence of a benevolent God.”

“I don’t know much about _that_ particular heavenly power, but I’ve got one right here that proves the existence of astrology.”

“I thought you told me the other day that you’ve never found any real evidence that astrology is legitimate.”

“I go back and forth on it. According to… page fifty-six of this book, it’s because I’m a Libra.”

“I’m going to hang up now, Mulder.”

“Wait!”

“You’d better not be thumbing through that book for information on Pisces.”

“You still like me, don’t you?”

“Even though you talk constantly and believe in crazy things?”

“Even though I talk constantly and believe in crazy things.”

“Entirely too much. Don’t tell.”

“You’re my favorite person to talk constantly to.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mulder.”

“What, no admission of loving our little chats in return?”

“Stop while you’re ahead, or I’ll find another boy to kiss behind the bleachers.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No, I don’t.”

“And you’ve never kissed me behind the bleachers, either. Should I be prepared for that?”

“Goodbye, Mulder.”

*

_April 17th, 1981_

It isn’t night yet, but as Dana lets him sweep her towards the car with a steady arm, the evening is creeping up on them. As far as her family knows, she’s at the movies with Ellen. As far as Ellen knows, she’s home, studying in her room. As far as she knows herself, she won’t be home until late, flushed and tingling everywhere after hours of basking in Mulder’s attention, and that’s all that matters. 

“Are we going back to that bookstore?” 

He’s climbing into the driver’s seat as she tugs her door shut, and he turns towards her with a grin. His hand lands on hers, warm and dry, his thumb sliding under her palm, and she feels it everywhere.

“If you want,” he shrugs, pauses in consideration and pops a sunflower seed from the bag in the cupholder into his mouth. “Or, we could go dancing.”

“Dancing.” 

He nods, enthusiastic and eager to please. 

She likes him so, so much.

He’s taken her to dinner, the next town over, and linked their fingers under the table, eyebrows lifted with mischief. He’s taken her to the big antiques store miles outside of town to shuffle through the remnants of peoples’ lives like detectives, whispering secrets back and forth like best friends and kissing sweetly behind bookshelves. 

One night, they’d driven to the middle of nowhere, and he’d tossed a blanket onto the hood of his car to stargaze, confessing it to be his favorite pastime. He’d rambled for hours, told her mythological stories about constellations and facts about space straight out of a textbook, the two overlapping until she stopped caring which was which. He hadn’t done anything more than hold her hand and talk to her that night, but it had felt like the most intimate experience of her life, being let into his world and given the grand tour, star by star. 

She hasn’t told him, but she thinks that last date might’ve been her favorite. He hasn’t told her, but she thinks that he’s been bursting at the seams waiting for someone to really, truly listen for a very long time.

She thinks, often, of his hypothesis of people-as-stardust, and wonders whether his fascination with space is merely transference, a safer realization of his wary fascination with everyone around him. 

“Mulder, where do you think you’re going to take me dancing?” It isn’t an argument, isn’t even really a protest. The idea simply seems so outlandish that Dana has to be contrary, on principle, to prompt him to warm her to the idea.

“Two towns over,” he replies immediately, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. It’s loose tonight, wild and wavy down her back, just the way that he likes it. 

He’s the type to make plans and then present them as if they’ve only just occurred to him, improvisatory in his delivery but procedural in his design. It’s a trait that she’s quickly become inordinately fond of, one that makes her inclined to trust him implicitly to take her wherever he pleases. 

Lifting her hand to his lips, he kisses the backs of her knuckles. She would scold him for taking an unfair advantage if she could figure out how to speak. It’s barely been a month, and she is already so far gone for him. Everyone else pales in comparison. 

“What if somebody sees us, Mulder?” She manages to murmur as he clasps her hand to his collarbone, just as worried for him as for herself. Her father and his deputies, she gathers, have been keeping entirely too close an eye on his entire family.

“I already thought of that, when I picked the place,” he says steadily, and she presses her fingertips into his skin, the soft flesh at the base of his throat giving under her touch. “Nobody’s gonna recognize us, baby.” 

Her mouth falls open, and his eyes fall to it like a stone in water. 

“Baby.” She repeats the pet name breathlessly. The newness of it is a thrill like nothing else. 

She wants him to say it again. She wants him to push it a step further, to specify that she is _his,_ with his big hands on her waist and his mouth bruising her neck. She wants him to pull her bodily into his lap and say it against her lips, the way that he has not done yet, and will continue to resist doing until she initiates that level of intimacy herself. She wants him to pull her out of her shell, all at once, instead of coaxing her out slowly like he’s been doing. 

“Yes, baby?” he parrots back, and he sounds like he’s teasing, but his eyes are serious, observational. 

“Mulder,” she sighs shakily. 

She has not been taught to feel this way without guilt.Wanting isn’t her place. In the back of her mind, her Sunday school teacher tells her to sit on her hands if she can’t keep them to herself, and the heat in her belly is so shamefully heavy that she nearly does. 

But then he kisses her palm, lashes fluttering as he shuts his eyes, and she forgets everything other than him. Her hands stopped obeying those old, practiced habits weeks ago, she thinks, maybe even as early as the day when he’d kissed one of them by the lockers as a greeting. They seem, now, to have a mind of their own. 

And so she watches herself lay them along his cheeks, fingers hooking behind his jaw to tug him across the console, and then she’s pressing her mouth to his. His own fingers slip into her hair, lips soft and ardent against hers even as she sinks her tongue past his teeth, dirtying the kiss like mud in the water. Like talking, confessing, telling him what she’s too ashamed to say.

When she leans back, it’s only for a moment, to listen to his shaky pants and almost, almost think too hard about the possibilities in the way his lips glisten. He’s indulgent as she pulls him back in, or maybe he’s just too breathless to protest, too weak from how she’s sucked the air out of his lungs. The idea of rendering him speechless is almost as intoxicating as the way the heat sinks through her as she tastes sunflower-seed salt on the roof of his mouth. 

“Let’s go dancing,” she says, the words spoken only inches away from his mouth as she prepares her hands to let him go. 

He is beautiful and gasping, and Dana knows that she’s going to fall in love with him, that maybe she’s already falling. That maybe she’s known him and this thing between them all along, and there is no need to fall, only to find herself, finally at home, in his space. 

Dizzy, she curls back into the passenger seat, propping one heel up on the leather. He nods, jerky and wide eyed, his breathing audibly unsteady even as he smiles helplessly at the steering wheel. 

“You are…” he trails off, shaking his head as he turns the key in the ignition. 

“What?” she asks, as if she doesn’t know exactly what he means.

“You always keep me guessing,” he says, and it isn’t that. The car purrs to life, and she presses her lips together hard as the shudder of the engine sends sparks through her thighs, right to the seam of her jeans. 

“I don’t think so.” She shakes her head, and he glances at her inquisitively, like he’s testing her. “I think you knew exactly who I was and what I wanted the moment you saw me.”

His hand finds hers over the console again, interlocking their fingers, puzzle pieces slotted together. 

“Maybe I did.”

“Mmm.”

“Does that bother you?” The question almost feels redundant. She’s quivering in his passenger seat, heady from adrenaline and desire and the addictive feeling of being given exactly she wants before she even knows she wants it.

She doesn’t answer. The curling of her thumb under his hand and the breath sucked in through kiss-swollen lips is response enough. 

She watches him as he watches the wide open road, from the tensed corner of his jaw to the cords of his forearm propped against the wheel, down to the bulge in his jeans, distinctly more noticeable than usual. The smile is on her face before she can stop it, and she doesn’t look away, even as her cheeks flush pink. 

Crossing her legs tightly, she imagines letting him take her against a wall on the edge of town in the night, sex for the sake of sex, just because she wants it. Pure instinct and animal need superceding the stiff and sacred, no one looking on but the cosmos and no one caring but the two of them, breathtakingly alive. The thought is desperately sinful and impractical, nothing she could bring herself to do allow anytime soon, if ever. Even so, she holds onto it until the last rays of sun disappear in the west. 

*

_May 3rd, 1981_

“So,” Maggie says stiffly. “How are things going with that nice boyfriend of yours, Melissa?”

The ceiling over the table seems to get lower every Sunday, the off-white walls nearer and more watchful, and Dana is too nauseous with claustrophobia and nerves to eat. Family dinners have become a stiff affair not unlike puppet show since Bill’s deployment, the four-sided dining room table turned lopsided with only five seated and the suspended lamp above swinging uneasily. 

“We’re not seeing each other anymore, Mom,” Melissa manages stiffly. 

Dana blinks, but isn’t surprised. Her sister’s last boyfriend hadn’t lasted long, either. Melissa is flighty and fanciful, prone to changing her mind on a whim. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” Maggie sighs. “I thought for sure that a proposal was coming.”

“I don’t think I wanted to marry him,” Melissa tries. “I mean, I only saw him for a few months…”

“I only saw your mother for a few months before I married her,” says their father. Maggie nods, sealing her lips together purposefully, never willing to risk interrupting her husband. “And I’d say we turned out just fine. We may have been old-fashioned, but we knew not to play fast and loose with God’s good graces, back in those days.” 

Dana’s stomach twists, and she sets down her fork so quietly she can’t even hear the noise herself. If she makes a sound, shows any signs of life, her father will turn to her and interrogate her about getting home five minutes late as if she’s a suspect in his sheriff’s station, while her mother lays on performative guilt like table salt. She gave up confession long ago, started lying through her teeth in the booth and hiding all her true feelings deep in her chest, her sternum a barrier between her secrets and the heavy cross around her neck. 

“I’m barely eighteen, Dad,” Melissa says. Her voice is as quiet as Dana’s ever heard it, and her sudden protesting against the idea of marriage is utterly unexpected. 

Across the table, Charlie fidgets, sparing a glance at the empty seat beside him. When he’d left, Dana had never thought she would miss Bill, but now, she wishes for the buffer he’d provided. The perfect son, engaged to his good Catholic girlfriend at seventeen after less than a year of dating, never letting their parents see more than a chaste kiss, but impregnating her what must’ve been mere hours after their post-graduation summer wedding. 

Not a single sin to be seen, not even those of the flesh – excluding, of course, the time Melissa had caught the couple in the car months before said wedding, in a compromising position. She had worn her disgust on her face for days after, but she’d held her tongue, preserved their brother’s reputation for the sake of the family and the congregation. Dana doesn’t think that Bill would’ve done the same for her. 

“No need to worry, dear,” Maggie says nervously. “We’ll find you a good husband.” 

“What if I don’t want one?” 

The question hangs in the dead air. Dana is struck with the now-foreign instinct to reach over and take Melissa’s hand like they are little girls again, comforting the nerves that her sister is likely hiding under the tablecloth. But she cannot even bring herself to share a sympathetic glance, unwilling to risk moving her own wooden features and revealing herself as the imposter that she is.

“There are plenty of perfectly nice options,” Maggie continues, ignoring her, and eyeing her own husband across the table. “What about that Mulder boy?”

Dana freezes, suddenly reminded that she was vividly alive, flesh and blood, not too long ago. Her lips are hot with the memory of his as she presses them together. It’s all she can do not to cover her face with her hands, suddenly sure that his gentle palm had left an imprint on her cheek, blackened and split like a burn scar. _Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last confession._

“Have you taken a look at him, Maggie?” Her father’s cold voice makes Dana’s stomach turn. “Don’t misunderstand, now, there’s nothing… _wrong_ with his people. But I won’t have my daughter seeing someone who thinks himself too good for the church.”

She thinks of the defined lines of Mulder’s face, the shock of warm metal when she had pressed herself back against his car and pulled him down to kiss her, open mouthed and heavy and full of the emotion she still couldn’t voice. He is too good for the church, she thinks, but not in the way her father means. They wouldn’t be able to contain him in all his vibrancy, even if he wasn’t Jewish by blood. After all, they can barely contain her, for all her strict religious upbringing and Irish heritage. 

“I forgot,” Maggie says, quickly. “His family isn’t Catholic.”

“Far, far from it.” He shakes his head, disapproving. “Best to stay away from him, Melissa. The boy could already use a night in the lockup, and with the cheeky attitude he’s got, I’m practically looking for a reason to put him there, teach him a few things. No need to help me along, now.”

“William,” Maggie admonishes, but doesn’t mean it. Dana wishes that she did, but knows that it wouldn’t do any good.

Before, she’d figured that she’d be grounded or even kicked out if her parents found out about them. Now, she’s realizing that it likely wouldn’t be her who got in trouble, but him – a possibility that scares her far, far more. 

“I’m not going to, Dad,” Melissa says. “Besides, I’ve heard he’s seeing someone anyway.” 

_He is,_ Dana wants to say, a surge of possessiveness joining the anxiety that’s been nestled under her breastbone since she gave him a final kiss goodbye. Melissa’s eyes dart towards her, the motion quick enough to be easily dismissed. There was never any hope of keeping their illicit relationship from her sister, but Melissa had guarded Bill’s secret years ago, and Dana trusts that she’ll keep her word and guard hers, too. 

“Good,” he nods. “Then let them do what they will. The Lord knows his soul can’t be saved unless he finds his way to Christ.” 

She grits her teeth in an effort to stay expressionless. If her upbringing has taught her anything, it is that placating her family while maintaining her sanity requires disassociating and operating herself like a marionette from above. She’s been bottling herself up and telling lies for years. But it was far, far easier when she didn’t want so badly to be in her body, and when she didn’t have a secret big enough to burst the wired hinges of her jaw crawling up her throat. _Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It will be a lifetime before my next confession._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! The first real chapter, including the one and only scene set in a high school in this entire fic. As mentioned before, the dates are important, since we've gone 15 months back in time from the prologue. My apologies for what I've done to the Scully family – Ahab didn't deserve this, but it had to be done, and he quite literally isn't Ahab in this AU. There's at least three books with thematic relevance in this chapter, and Moby Dick is not one of them, because he didn't read it to her in this universe. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr @kittenscully, where this will also be posted, and please let me know via comments/tags/messages/asks what you think!


	3. Summer

_May 23rd, 1981_

Graduation is a hot, dusty affair. Dana sits, suspended in stillness, between her mother and Charlie, and doesn’t watch as Melissa’s hair whips in the dry wind. There’s someone else to look at, someone she can’t keep her eyes off of. 

He walks first, of course. M before S. The gown swallows him up, even with all of his height and bulk. There’s a grin on his face as he receives his diploma, and Dana shields her eyes from the sun, squints to see if it’s the same sunlit smile he graces her with when she takes him by surprise. She’s almost unreasonably pleased when it isn’t. 

The ceremony drags on dully after he descends out of her line of vision, and her head pounds with the weight of her ponytail. Her focus fades in and out, kaleidoscopic and hazy, tongue thick and thirsty in her mouth, palms pressed sticky to the blue cotton skirt covering her thighs. Even though she can’t see him, she can feel the force of his waiting for her even more strongly than her father’s ever-present scrutiny. Once again, she’s thankful that Melissa is single, and will be the focus of the patented Scully family disapproval until she’s satisfactorily married off.

Tonight’s excuse is an unsolicited gift from Melissa, something Dana thinks might be an attempt at an olive branch: _I would love to go out with some of my friends for dinner, and bring Dana along, Dad. Would that be alright?_ And of course, he’d agreed, albeit reluctantly, not wanting to turn her down on a special day. 

No one but their parents were under the impression that Dana would be joining them, of course, especially not Melissa herself. The two of them had only spoken about Mulder briefly, in whispers, and Dana hadn’t confessed to seeing him, too scared that she’d be overheard by a saint or a father, heavenly and listening from on high or earthly and just across the hall. But Melissa knows that the plans she clears in front of their father’s straight-backed, dark wood armchair in the evenings are lies, and she knows that today is Mulder’s graduation, too. 

She doesn’t know that Mulder’s parents couldn’t care less about the occasion, or that their absence stings him deeply. She doesn’t know that Dana is all he has today, or that she hasn’t been able to shake the sadness out of him, even with all her efforts. But those things aren’t for other people to know. 

“I’ve got to fetch something from the car,” Dana announces mechanically, when they’re all ready to leave. “I think my keys must have slipped out of my purse.” 

“We’ll wait for you in the school parking lot,” Melissa says, nodding at her stiffly.

The con goes off without a hitch. Dana’s hands shake with nerves all the way to Mulder’s wide sedan, parked around back, where no one will see them slip away. The ponytail goes first, the tie yanked out and slipped around her wrist as she shakes out her hair and feels the pressure in her head lessen. She clasps her cross between her thumb and forefinger, and tucks it into her dress, hating the way it feels against her chest but hating the idea of wearing it like a label even more. 

It’s not until she climbs inside and fits his big hand in between her two smaller ones that she remembers to breathe. His knuckles are warm and malleable, and she sighs and kneads them with her fingertips, watches her own skin go white and pink and white again from the pressure until she’s sure her blood is circulating, her body just as unquestionably alive as his. 

“Are you okay?” 

“I am now.”

The concern in his eyes softens into affection. His gown and cap have been discarded, leaving him in jeans and a Roswell, New Mexico t-shirt, his hair adorably mussed and the faint sheen of sweat from the heavy garment lingering on all of his exposed skin. There’s sadness lurking in the lines of his forehead, and she’s determined to shoo it away. 

The desire to put her hands all over him is nearly irresistible. But she’ll need to make him laugh first. 

“Mr. Mulder,” she starts, her lips twitching in the beginnings of a smile. 

“Yes, miss?” He responds, imitating her formal tone playfully.

“I think you had better start this car, Mr. Mulder,” she says. “Before I do something entirely improper where someone could see.”

“Improper?” He asks innocently, reaching out to brush a fingertip over the halter top strap of her dress. “How improper, exactly? Just so we’re clear.”

“Terribly improper.” 

“Oh?”

“People would talk.”

“Why, Miss Dana, now you’ve got me curious.” He’s grinning, now, practically sparkling with mischief, and she’s positive that she will climb into his lap and start the rumor of a lifetime if he looks at her like that for a moment longer.

Letting go of his hand, she props herself up against the console, hovering her mouth near his ear. 

“Shut up and drive us somewhere I can kiss you, Mulder.”

There’s a quick intake of breath, and his eyebrows shoot up. 

“You don’t have to ask me twice.”

When he pulls off to park behind a gas station, five miles outside of town, she leans over and kisses him so thoroughly that he stares at her after, dumbfounded and smitten, for several long moments. The sun is setting over the prairie, brightening the side of his face with heavy washes of honey-colored light through the windshield. 

_Never say I’m not a girl of my word, Mulder_.

And then, he grabs her and tugs her over the console with two broad hands on her waist, grinning at her delighted giggle. She settles into her new favorite seat in his lap, and has just enough time to enjoy how his chest feels before he’s paying her back in kind, all grabbing hands and hot, wet mouth sliding against hers. 

“Happy graduation, Mulder,” she murmurs breathlessly when they finally come up for air, rocking her hips lightly against the bulge in his jeans, almost shocked at how raspy her own voice is. 

“You’re angelic with the sun behind you,” he murmurs back, his wide palms mapping out her ribs, spread like wings across her body. “Angelic, Dana. I’d tell you to pinch me, but if this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.”

“I thought you said you didn’t believe in that stuff.” She mocks him softly, tracing the tendon in his neck with her fingertips and pressing another lazy kiss to his mouth. “Angels, demons, saints…”

“Looking at you could make me believe in anything.”

“Well,” she says, her cheeks sore from smiling. “ _I_ don’t believe in that stuff anymore, you know.”

“Ah, but that’s because you can’t see what I see,” he tells her. 

“Oh, really?” She nudges her hips forward again to tease him, tongue darting out to wet her lips. 

“Really.” His voice breaks, almost a growl now, his pupils blown so wide she could fall into them. “If you could, you’d know there’s someone out there worth worshipping.”

“Mulder,” she sighs, walking her hands up his shoulders, his neck. He palms her hips, pulling her flush against him, and licks into her mouth again. This kiss is slower, more reverent, as if he’s trying to prove his point, and she whimpers helplessly when it ends, trying and failing to catch her breath. 

“Let me take you for milkshakes.” He nudges her nose with his, practically starry-eyed with adoration as he runs his hands up and down her sides. 

Even if she wasn’t pressed close enough to feel the very solid evidence of his arousal, the strain in his voice would’ve given him away. And she knows he’s been satisfied before, back north with some other, older girl, one that he left behind when he came here. But he’s told her a dozen different ways that he expects nothing of her, just as he’s doing now, staring at her with that sweet, earnest face, as if she’s worth any wait. As if she would still be worth it, even if they did nothing but kiss and drink milkshakes until the sun burned out and the planet went cold. 

And yet, it’s precisely that persistent devotion that makes her need him so desperately that she can barely contain herself. She drapes her wrists around his neck and surges up to press her mouth to his one more time, allows herself to _want_ for a few more blissful moments, imagining reaching for the button of his jeans and taking him in her hand and —

“Okay,” she breathes, smiling against his lips. 

“Okay.” His forehead leans against hers, the both of them panting softly into the heated air between.

It isn’t until later, when they’re sitting on the same side of a red vinyl booth, that she’s calmed down enough to realize that graduation might not be anything to celebrate after all. 

That now, there’s nothing keeping him here, except for her. 

*

_June 30th, 1981_

In the space between his jaw and his hipbones, Dana has forgotten herself entirely. 

She’s never thought of Mulder as a gentleman, nor has she wanted him to be. But he was not the one who had demanded more than heated kisses in the driver’s seat. He was not the one who had pulled her into the back instead and begged to be allowed to touch. He was not the one who had his hands stuffed under her shirt, touching as if she was slipping out of his fingers like sand.

It’s summer, really summer, and he’s done school, for good. He hates it here, except for maybe when he’s with her, and every day, she is afraid that she won’t be enough, that he’ll leave. It’s dangerous for them to see each other, for him even more than for her, and she’s told him so, but he hasn’t made any attempt to stop, though she can’t imagine that she’s worth the trouble. 

And he knows that there’s something she isn’t telling him, because he _knows_ her, but much like her secrets, she doesn’t want to speak her fears aloud and make them real, even though they grow every day.

So, recently, once she starts to touch him, she cannot figure out how to stop until he makes her.

His body is solid and lean with muscle and his heat floods her palms like touching hot metal. The cotton of his t-shirt sticks to him, and she peels it up, feels the saliva collect under her tongue as she counts his ribs with her fingers, loses herself in the short, coarse hair in the center of his chest. She would cover his nipple with her open lips if she wasn’t clinging to her last bit of restraint, and finds herself practically drooling on his sternum instead. 

“Dana,” he pants, and she surges up, slides her tongue into his open mouth to lick her name from his teeth. 

He’s made her desire into something tangible, something she can put into words. More than just a dull stomachache in church, more than a scream crawling up her throat or the feeling that she’s trapped by clothing and collared with gold chain. Wanting, with him, is quantifiable. 

She wants to map him out with it, trace every muscle with her lips, lap the sweat off of his stomach like ice cream. She settles for sinking back down to kiss his chest open-mouthed, one, two, three, four times, a trail of heat down towards his belly button. She knows what she wants, where she’s going, feels him strung out and tight beneath her and imagines how his neck will arch when she has her mouth around him. She knows how to be of service, how to worship. She’s heard enough and imagined enough to know what to do, even if she’s not experienced like his girl back home was. 

She won’t let him leave her without making him fall apart, at least once, even if she hasn’t shaken off enough of the shame to take him inside of her. She won’t. 

“Dana,” he tries again, and she hums, manages to lift her head and focus on his eyes, but only barely, dragging her blunt nails over his chest. He sinks his fingers into her long hair, gently tugging. “Come up here, baby.”

_Baby._ She weakens so quickly that she loses her breath, and one of his hands finds her shoulder to pull her up. His palm cups her face, and he kisses her deeply enough that her head swims, the heat and lack of oxygen making her woozy and soft against every single one of his hard edges. 

Dana hasn’t been drunk, but she thinks that it would be nothing compared to this, the vertigo of his tongue on the roof of her mouth and his big hands touching her everywhere. Already, he’s ruined her for anyone else, and he hasn’t even had her yet. Already, she’s unalterably his. 

All she can do is hope beyond hope that he wants to keep her. 

He doesn’t let her go until she whines for it, her vision going blurry, and she only manages a single gulp of air before he coaxes her mouth back onto his. She thinks she should be able to breathe without needing to break the kiss, but she can’t remember how, can’t remember a single thing other than his mouth, his hands, his voice. It isn’t until he presses his lips to her temple instead that she realizes she’s rocking her hips against his stomach.

“Look at you,” he breathes, his lips on her ear, on her jaw, on her throat. “You want it so bad, so, so bad.” 

She’s flushed, she knows it, and she very nearly pulls away, embarrassed by the acknowledgement of her own arousal and her shameful display of it. This was meant to be about him, about his thoroughly male need, the kind that she’s allowed and even expected to acknowledge. But he catches her face before she can put much distance between them. 

“Dana,” he says. He kisses her. He kisses her again. He calls her _baby_. She whimpers, her mouth open and pleading, until he kisses her a third time. “You’re so fucking beautiful like this. I can’t – fuck, please, let me –”

His hands find their way to her waist, her hips, tugging up the loose folds of her skirt until there’s only a thin layer of cotton between them. The point of connection is so slick, so hot, and she doesn’t know whether it’s sweat or her own desire, his heat or hers. She shouldn’t be doing this, has been told her entire life how sinful and selfish it is to serve her own desire. But then he sucks her lip into his mouth and worries it like hard candy, and she forgets everything else. 

His palm is on her hip, and she’s touched herself how he wants to touch her, but she doesn’t know how to tell him. His palm is on her bare thigh, and she’s bitten down on her pillow to thoughts of this, but she doesn’t know how to tell him. His palm is tucking up, up, under the bunched up fabric, and down, down, between them, and –

“Oh, _please,_ ” she gasps. This is how.

“Yeah?” His lips press, open and dirty, to hers, and this wasn’t the plan, but that seems unimportant now. Everything is so easy with him. She can’t let him go. 

“Yeah,” she tells him. Buries her mouth under his jaw. “ _Please,_ Mulder.”

When she grinds into his hand, skin on slippery skin, it’s like liquid gold. He cradles the back of her head, kisses her sloppily, and it’s all she can do to keep herself from crying out, letting him swallow her moans and whimpers. She doesn’t want to exist without him. She wants him to swallow her whole. 

“More?” The question is mumbled against her mouth, and she nods, her teeth bumping into his lips. 

With his fingers buried inside her, deep and thick and aching, Dana is convinced she finally understands what it means to need. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop craving, no matter how much she has of him. His eyes are attentive, lips parted with awe as he stares up at her like she’s the eighth wonder of the world, and she doesn’t know how to tell him that he is perfect, and that he’ll never, ever be near enough. 

And then, his free arm winds around her waist, crushing her body impossibly close against his, and maybe, he already understands. 

She sinks her teeth into his neck as he works her, as if she can hold onto him like that, a dog with a bone, a sole survivor clutched to a lifesaver ring. He’s talking, murmuring into her hair, and his wired forearm is tense with effort beneath her soft stomach, muscles flexing, and she can’t understand a word with the roar of need in her ears. There will be an angry mark when she tears her mouth away from his throat, and she wants to keep it there forever, darken it again and again with her teeth and tongue every night and morning and moment alone. 

The thrust that sends her flying is like a leap into the deep end. She feels it all over her body, how tightly she’s clenching him, how wild she’s gone, crying out into his neck and rocking helplessly into his steady hand as she comes apart. 

And it’s nothing like when she’s done it herself, nothing like she’s imagined it being. 

Every cell in her body is alive, clean and soft and burning. She can feel it building up again in her stomach like kindling. He’s still talking, but she’s distracted by her own heartbeat, palpable in her fingertips against his skin, her own blood running hotter than she thought was possible. 

Just as she thinks she might start moving with purpose, ride his fingers into oblivion for the second time, his free hand tangles in her hair, lifting her head so he can look at her. 

He’s saying her name, and his face is so tender, his pupils big enough to fall into, plush lips twisted with emotion that she doesn’t have a name for. There’s nothing to do but kiss him, gasp into his beautiful mouth as his fingers shift inside her, and hope that he doesn’t let her go. She realizes she’s crying only when he breaks the kiss.

“Hey,” he murmurs, his hand too soft on her cheek. “Hey, did I – what is it, did I hurt you?” 

She shakes her head so vehemently that she can see her tears scattering on his face. His eyes are concerned and kind and she can’t stand it, closes hers in response.

“I don’t want you to go,” she gasps before he can worry any longer, too soft to hold it back. The words fall out of her lips like hail marys, like fat raindrops on the dry earth. “I don’t want you to leave me here, I don’t want to be without you.”

“Dana,” he exhales, and she thinks for a moment that he’s going to cry too. “Oh, Dana, oh, baby. Is this what you’ve been so scared of?”

“Please,” she manages. Her lip trembles, and she’s lost all the emotional restraint she spent seventeen years learning at her mother’s knee. And, _God_ , he’s still three knuckles deep inside of her, his fingers curled so tightly that it hurts, and she’s still dripping, wanting it again so badly that her vision blurs. “I can’t – this can’t be it, this can’t be it for us, Mulder, there has to be more than this –”

His hand buries itself in her hair, pulls her face into the hollow of his neck. The weight of his arm is heavy on her shoulder, her spine. His palm is cradling the back of her head, and he rocks her as she sobs into his skin. When she begs him again not to leave her, she can barely hear herself speak. 

“I’m not,” he says, and it only brings a fresh wave of tears and a moan as her hips rock involuntarily. “No, Dana, I mean it, I’m not going to leave you. I was never going to leave you.” 

“You hate it here, Mulder, we both know that – and you had that girl back home anyway –”

“That doesn’t matter,” he soothes. His lips press to her hair. “That doesn’t matter, baby. You’re the only person that matters to me, and I’m not leaving you.”

“I have another year,” she murmurs, sniffling into his skin. “A whole year.”

“And I’ll wait for you.” 

“Why?” she can’t help the question, even though she knows she would wait for him if the roles were reversed. Even though she’s known they are two halves of a whole since the first time she saw him.

“You know why, Dana.” His wrist flexes, and she keens as his fingertips collide with the raw spot inside her, her hips starting to work again.

She tastes salt on his skin as she kisses his throat, beside the bruise she’d left behind. His pulse is pounding hard enough that she can feel it under her tongue without pressing. And she does know why, and she loves him, too.

*

_July 7th, 1981_

“Scully residence, Dana speaking.”

“Scully, it’s me.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“I would never.”

“Hi, Mulder.”

“Hi, Dana.”

“You’re incredibly punctual. It’s exactly four thirty P.M.”

“I’m a man of my word.”

“So it would seem.”

“You’ve been sitting by the phone for at least an hour, haven’t you?”

“I’ve had to pass on three messages for my father. I was worried you might call early.”

“You know I wouldn’t risk that.”

“I know.”

“Fuck. Dana, I miss you _so_ much.”

“I miss you too. I would’ve called last night, if I knew the number.”

“I guess we should’ve made plans to do it then, huh? I nearly called around ten thirty but didn’t want to risk it.”

“I was probably staring at the phone wanting to talk to you around then.”

“I’d tell you that we’re telepathically linked, but I don’t have the books with me to back it up.”

“You say that as if any book you had would convince me that telepathic connections are remotely legitimate.”

“Not everything legitimate can be proven by science, Dana.”

“Mulder. The entire point of science is to prove everything that’s legitimate, and disprove everything that isn’t.”

“Einstein believed that science and religion were necessary counterparts.”

“Einstein was also a raging misogynist who used his far more intelligent wife as a house servant.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Many of his theories are also flawed. I’ve got some thoughts about that, but I don’t think I know enough about physics yet to properly explain what I mean.”

“I don’t envy any fans of Einstein what they’ll be put through once you do know enough.”

“Besides, religion is different than things like telepathy or astrology, or any other pseudoscientific beliefs.”

“Telepathy and astrology play parts in some religious beliefs.”

“But I don’t adhere to most religious beliefs, and I certainly don’t find them legitimate.”

“That is the checkmate, huh?”

“Is that a surrender I hear, Mulder?”

“I don’t have a white flag, but if I did, I’d be waving it. At least for now.”

“How’s the family reunion?”

“Lots of Mulders. I can’t believe there’s this many. You would’ve thought we’d have died out from lack of communication by now, or at the very least been riddled with estrangements and divorces.”

“I’m sure we’d have you beat in sheer quantity, if we all congregated. Most Scullys are convinced that it’s their sole duty to repopulate the world.”

“Are they aware that the world is already fully populated?”

“It doesn’t seem like it.”

“Well, there definitely aren’t _that_ many Mulders.”

“Count yourself lucky.”

“But the ones that are around are insufferable. Maybe moving south of the mason-dixon line has done us good.”

“We’re not a southern state, you know.”

“You wouldn’t know that from the way people act.”

“We’re midwestern, Mulder.”

“I’ve never understood why they call it that. How is the relative location of Kansas to the other states even remotely western?”

“If you prefer, you can just say it’s a Plains State.”

“Well, the still-slightly-more-northern Mulders are bourgeois suburban potential yacht owners, every single one of them.”

“Even the children?”

“Them most of all. My cousin Tabitha got a King Charles Cavalier puppy for her birthday.”

“Those are really expensive, aren’t they?”

“Tabitha is five years old. She wouldn’t know the difference between this pricey little dog and a street cat.”

“You underestimate children, Mulder.”

“Not Tabitha. She’s mistaken me for her father four times already, and he’s at least twice my age.”

“Maybe you can take the opportunity to teach her some better manners. And some empathy.”

“You make a fair point, Dana.”

“Of course I do.”

“Next time Tabitha calls me papa I’ll sit her on my knee and preach the benefits of charity.”

“Who knows, maybe she’ll gift her King Charles Cavalier puppy to a family in need.”

“What on earth would a family in need want a King Charles Cavalier puppy for? No, wait, don’t answer that.”

“You’re such an idiot. I don’t know why I like you.”

“You like me?”

“ _So_ much. Don’t tell.”

“I think we’ve been spending too much time together, Dana.”

“Not to be contrary, but I don’t think that’s possible.”

“I’ve barely been gone a day and a half, and I feel like I have a stomachache just from missing you.”

“That’s not one of the potential causes of stomach discomfort, Mulder.”

“Don’t be contrary. I mean it. It’s right under my ribcage. I’d put your hand on it to show you, but you’re all the way over there.”

“I know. I have one too.”

“Dana…”

“You’ll be back in a few days.”

“I will.”

“And I’ll get in your car and you can take me wherever you like.”

“Don’t I always?”

“Preferably somewhere very isolated so that I can get into your lap again.”

“Why, Dana!”

“I’ll wear a skirt.”

“I’m going to say something indecent if you keep talking about this.”

*

_July 19th, 1981_

If she tries hard enough, Dana can remember when she idolized her father. 

He was nicer when she was young – when he’d just been voted in as sheriff and was not yet a pillar of the community. Before Dana and Melissa got their crosses, before their successive confirmations. Before Charlie, and before they installed central air, back when the bedrooms were hot enough in summer that the long-sleeved nightgowns they had to wear were unbearable. 

Back then, he would sometimes pick her and Melissa up in his work car after school, blocky yellow letters that spelled out S-H-E-R-I-F-F and the big gold star painted over pitch black on the side. They would sit on the plastic chairs in the station as he finished up paperwork, Melissa sleepy and bored and Dana wide awake and kicking her legs as she bounced in place and stared around in awe. 

_I wanna work for you one day, Daddy,_ she remembers saying, as they headed back out to the parking lot. _I would be the best deputy you ever had. I promise._

He had laughed, in a way she now realizes was condescending, and smoothed her fuzzy baby hairs away from her forehead like a little duckling. 

What Dana can’t remember is when exactly things changed. She supposes it started to happen when he and the rest of the world stopped finding her tomboyish tendencies cute, and decided to bleed them out of her slowly, with needlepoint and home ec classes and shoes she couldn’t run in. 

After all, girls didn’t grow up to be sheriff’s deputies, or doctors, or anything else exciting or stimulating or real. That wasn’t their place. No, girls grew up to be wives. 

She thinks that she stopped loving her father the day that she decided she wouldn’t ever let herself become her mother, relegated to just wife, just woman. Just lacquered shell of a body, used and fertilized and opened up to give birth, and then back on her feet, painted pretty with a baby on her hip to make dinner the next day. 

Melissa hadn’t wanted that either, she remembers. She’d been even more distasteful at the idea of marriage and pregnancy than Dana, her face soured like tasting a lemon. But Melissa gave up on rebellion long ago, and now, Melissa’s boyfriend of six weeks is at their Sunday dinner. And he has been approved by both parents in moments.

He’s at least ten years her sister’s senior, and Dana realizes it immediately. Of course, that doesn’t matter. He has a good, stable job, a good, clean-cut face, and most importantly, a good, church-going, Catholic family. He’s not yet married because he’d decided to get his life on track first, to be nice and stable before starting a family of his own. This is, apparently, a perfectly respectable choice for a young man to make, but would be social suicide for a young woman.

“You don’t happen to have any nice brothers, do you?” Maggie asks lightly, smiling wider than Dana has seen in years. 

He has three brothers, as it turns out. Two are single. Dana’s stomach feels like a rock. 

She excuses herself from the table the moment she finishes eating, and walks up to her room as the stairwell walls close in, every step impossibly heavier. Her palm closes around her cross, holding it aloft so the chain doesn’t choke her. By the time she finally closes the door gingerly and collapses onto her bed, her ribs feel like rattling train tracks, and her hands barely stay steady long enough to dial his number.

“Hello?”

“Mulder,” she breathes. “It’s me.”

“Dana!” 

She can hear him smile through the receiver, and she cradles the phone to her cheek like it’s his hand, comforting and calming. Things have been so good between them since she came clean about her fears, and she doesn’t want it to end.

“Mulder,” she repeats, and swallows.

“Dana,” he says, his voice deepening with concern. “What’s wrong? Did something happen? Are you –”

“Melissa introduced us to her new boyfriend,” Dana speaks up. “And he’s exactly… what my family wants.”

“I see.” He sighs through his nose, and she pictures his long frame stretched out on his bed, pretty mouth pursed and brow lined with worry in the center. She wants to drape herself over him and smooth it away. “Does he have something to do with the reason you’re not at dinner right now?”

“He’s older than her, too old, and he’s frighteningly clean shaven, and he’s the type to go to Mass twice a week, maybe more,” she continues, speaking faster now as all of it hits her at once. “And he has brothers, and two of them are single. And I saw the way my father looked at me when he said so, and I couldn’t stay down there, Mulder, I just couldn’t breathe, and I still feel like I’m going to be sick –”

“Dana, Dana, hey,” he cuts in, gentle but firm. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. We’ll make the best of it. Breathe.”

“It’s not going to be okay, Mulder,” she bursts out. “This is exactly what I was afraid of. My parents are going to make Melissa set me up with some 27 year old ready to start his good Irish Catholic family, and they won’t let me even apply to college if it’s not to find a husband, and I’ll never get out of here, and I’ll never get to see you again, and –”

“That’s not going to happen.” This time, when he interrupts her, his tone isn’t soft at all. She pictures his jaw set, his eyes burning cold, and chews on her lower lip. “Do you hear me, Dana? None of that is going to happen.”

“But…” 

“I’m not going to let that happen to you,” he repeats, and she would be offended by the possessive implications in his voice if she didn’t want so badly to climb inside of him and stay there. “Come on, you trust me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice small. “I trust you.”

“And I am promising you right now,” Mulder says. “We’re going to get out of here together. They won’t be able to stop you from going to college when you’re long gone and over eighteen. And Dana, I’m going to be right there with you for as long as you want me.” 

“Okay. I believe you.” 

And she does, even though her pulse is still racing, her palms sweaty against the plastic of the phone. Even though he can’t possibly mean it, not really, and the words ought to ring empty and untruthful. Even though she has no idea how to avoid the inevitable, and no idea how to dissuade the oncoming terror without him to hold her until the pressure on her chest makes it go away. She doesn’t tell him that she’s panicking, but her breathing is unsteady and gasping, and he must know.

There’s a string of curse words through the receiver, and then he’s speaking up again. “Can you get out of the house safely?”

“Uh-huh,” she nods, because she needs to be near him too badly not to risk it. 

“I’m coming to get you.”

*

_August 11th, 1981_

At her request, they’re laid out under the stars again, this time in a heap of mexican blankets on the grass. Tomorrow, she’ll be back in school, nervously avoiding the scrutiny of those she used to consider friends. This weekend, she’ll meet a brother of the man she knows will marry her sister. But tonight, she’s only Mulder’s, curled into his side with her palm nestled against his chest as the nearly full moon casts pale light over the both of them. 

“That’s Casseiopeia,” He murmurs, pointing upwards. “And there’s Orion’s Belt, see?”

She buries her nose in his neck instead of looking. Once upon a time, Melissa had shown her every one of the constellations, a big book with illustrations open in her lap in their backyard. 

“Dana?” 

“Mm,” she hums, and presses a kiss to the column of his throat, the traces of stubble growing there pleasantly coarse against her lips. 

“Did I really study all of this for nothing?” He’s smiling, and she can hear it. “You know I did this to impress you, right?”

“Mmhm.” 

He sighs, horribly dramatic as ever. It’s still warm out, the earth below them is holding heat from the day’s beating sun, but it’s breezy enough that she can press her whole body against his without burning up. And so she does.

It isn’t close enough, of course. But under the calm, milky blanket of the night sky, in stillness that spreads around them like cool water, Dana can pretend that they’re the only two people in the world, or at least for miles and miles in every direction. And for a handful of moments, the world slows down, at peace. 

There is only open land, two warm bodies, and the night sky that he has led her through hand in hand, vast and wide above.

“You only want me for my body,” he declares, and she smiles into his neck.

“Well, you’ve got me all figured me out, stardust boy,” she says dryly, her voice coming out throaty and low. 

He chuckles, winds a strand of her long hair around his fingers and tugs gently before releasing it and petting her head. 

“You’re made of constellations too, you know,” he muses. “I know, I’ve seen them.” 

She hums, upwards, like a question.

“Uh-huh.” His other hand runs softly over her side, tracing across the bare skin where her shirt has ridden up. “Freckles, instead of stars.” A fingertip tap-tap-taps along her lowest rib, and she shivers, burrows into his neck. “I’ll find all of them eventually, if you let me. I’m no good with paper and a pencil, but I can map you out in other ways.” 

“Mulder,” she mumbles, flushing all the way down to her toes. She thinks of his lips wandering across her bare breasts last night, her very own hitchhiker in their very own galaxy, taking up every inch of space she allows him, and knows immediately that she’ll lose all coherence if he keeps talking. There isn’t a moment that passes without her wanting him like that, but right now, she wants to hold him just like this even more. 

He kisses the top of her head, and falls silent, as if he understands exactly what she means. 

_I love you,_ she wants to say. Instead, she curls her leg around his, and contemplates silence, and space, and what it hears of her thoughts. 

She has not yet ceased to believe in God, or dared to take off her cross, but she has ceased to believe that He loves her or pays her any attention. There’s no one watching, no matter what she’s been told – no one other than Mulder’s stars, and they’re distant and cool and merciful, too old to know anything but the plodding passage of time. 

Watching is one thing, composed of light and shape, but listening is another, more complex. The speed of sound through air is quantifiable, and it doesn’t travel at all in the vacuum of space. If there’s a higher power or fate-keeper hidden in the distant pinpricks of light, she doesn’t think they’re capable of hearing her, not even if she were to stand on a hill and shout. The more she considers it, the more convinced Dana becomes that there’s nothing and no one listening at all. The thought isn’t as comforting as she expected it to be.

“Either you’re deep in thought, or you’ve fallen asleep,” Mulder speaks up. “From your breathing, I assume it’s the former.”

With another hidden smile, Dana traces the shape of his pectoral muscles with her fingertip. He isn’t very good at being quiet, she’s learned. Sometimes, it’s exactly what she needs, and she’s convinced that he sprang into existence fully formed as her perfect match, always finding a way to fill the empty spaces that she stumbles into. Other times, he’s simply too talkative, and won’t shut up until her tongue is in his mouth. 

“Knew it,” he says. “Wanna tell me what’s going on in my favorite brain?”

She shakes her head. She wouldn’t know how to say.

“Okay, no talking.” He’s agreeable and easy as ever. His palm finds her bare shoulder, and runs along it smooth and warm, gathering her closer. “Wanna come up here and kiss me instead?”

This time, she can’t suppress a giggle. He’s got to quit reading her mind.

She props herself up on her elbow, mussing the blanket beneath her in an attempt to reposition herself until she can look right into his eyes, luminescent in the moonlight.

“Hi,” she mumbles, and it’s dark, but she sees him smile anyway. 

“Hi, baby.” 

His lips are warm and taste like the cherry cokes they’d left in the car, and she wonders if he tastes the same thing on her mouth. There’s a soft hum in his chest, the length of his hand resting along her face as he thumbs across her temple, wiping away the pensive weight of her thoughts.

When he leans up to press kisses to her forehead instead, the curl of his fingers moves to the base of her skull, cradling the hollow bone like a baby bird. It isn’t until his lips trail to her hairline that she realizes what the gesture means, her lungs swelling with air in the revelation. He’s still talking, but through touch instead – the way that she talks to him, when she’s unable to put her thoughts to words. Gifting his self-professed favorite brain with physical reassurances, reminders of his care, even though she won’t voice its contents.

Her chest feels wide open, hemorrhaging affection messily onto his white shirt, and she lifts her head to press her lips tenderly against the soft crease beside his nose. 

He brushes her hair back, tucking it gently behind her ear, and looks up at her with a smile that already knows every one of her secrets. 

“I love you,” she says, out loud this time. 

He inhales quickly and stills beneath her, as if he wants to suck the words into his own chest and keep them there. Two hands frame her face, and two dry thumbs press to her lips, a long moment filling with breathless silence as his eyes flit around her face.

“Dana,” he murmurs finally, all of the air rushing out of him at once. He tugs her closer, until their foreheads knock together gently. “I love you so, so much.”

She smiles, starlit, even though he can’t see. And then, she closes her eyes tightly as they trade breaths, and silently thanks him for being the one to listen. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are heating up! This was a far more msr-heavy chapter, but really, it's all still about our Dana.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @kittenscully, where this'll also be posted. Please let me know what you think via tags/comments/asks/messages etc., it's always appreciated.


	4. Autumn

_September 11th, 1981._

Dana hates the local Italian restaurant with a passion she normally reserves for sweat, ignorance, and the homily. There are many reasons, not the least of which include the general quality of the food and the utter lack of flavor in the red sauce, not to mention the hideous paisley tablecloths. She also hates the dress she’s borrowed from Melissa, because of the too-long, rough lace sleeves. At least, she figures, it keeps the dead weight of her cross off of her bare skin.

She hates the man sitting across from her, too. It’s not the safest hatred to harbor, since she needs to see him to keep her family placated and herself and Mulder safe, but she’s collecting pieces of evidence to bolster it nonetheless, storing them like pressed flowers between the pages of her memory. At the moment, she thinks that his failure to even ask her opinion on the restaurant before taking her there is the most relevant.

“She’ll have the house salad,” he announces. 

Dana opens her mouth to disagree, but the waiter nods once, and then departs before she can. Biting down on the inside of her cheek, Dana imagines being at Sunday dinner in an attempt to maintain her composure, and bumps his tendency to make decisions for her to the top of her “Reasons to Hate Paul O’Connor” list. 

“You look very nice,” Paul informs her, his tone utterly patronizing. 

It’s not a good compliment, and besides, she vehemently disagrees. Mulder would laugh about the dress with her, she’s sure that he would. And then he would take it off of her and she would melt in his palms. 

“Thank you,” she smiles tightly. “Missy’s dress.”

It’s their third date, and she resents Paul the most for taking up her Friday nights. The first two had been more tolerable, mainly because they’d been joined by his brother and her sister, but he seems to think that now, the two of them need time alone. 

She vehemently disagrees with that, as well. 

It isn’t long before he starts talking about his job. Dana finds it truly outstanding that he has so many stories about working real estate in a town as small as theirs, especially considering it’s only been two years since he passed the exam and got the job. She’s never been so relieved by a man’s penchant for talking exclusively about himself before, mainly because it allows her to nod, smile, and not even attempt to pay attention. 

Sucking on an ice cube, she thinks about Mulder, and last Saturday night. She’s grown better at not blushing bright red at sordid memories recently. It seems that the more she collects, the easier it is. His cock had been velvet on her tongue, and if she tries hard enough, she can remember the exact taste of his pulse at the root. 

“They’ll foreclose before the end of the month, no doubt about that,” Paul is saying. 

“Uh huh,” she nods, dumb and wide eyed, encouraging him to continue. And continue he does. As does she. 

It was only a few weeks ago that she’d first knelt between Mulder’s legs on the floor of his car, and it had been for him that time, but for herself the next three. It’s his reactions that make her want it so much, the way he curses softly and tries not to pull on her hair, his hands spread prayer-like, hovering around her head. The way he shudders between her lips, completely at her mercy, gorgeous with tension and awe. How weak he gets the moments before he lets her suck him, when she has her hand around him, even as he tells her that she doesn’t have to, that he doesn’t need it. _I do,_ she’d told him, murmuring against his mouth with her hand shoved down his jeans, thumb working along the side of his shaft. _I need it. Don’t make me beg for it, Mulder._ She isn’t so sure she’d meant that last part. She doesn’t think she’d mind begging, not in the slightest. Not for him. 

“Ah, thank you,” Paul addresses their water, who’s delivered the salad she doesn’t want as well as his actual meal. 

The lettuce looks inedible. She smiles. “Thank you.” 

“So nice to be out by ourselves, isn’t it?” Paul says. 

“So nice,” she echoes dryly. 

“That looks good.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where was I?” Paul wonders. 

“The, um, foreclosure…” she waves her fork absentmindedly. 

“Oh, of course.” 

He talks between bites, and Dana sinks back into her thoughts, nodding every so often. She got lucky, she thinks, that it’s the man she actually wants to see who values reciprocity, rather than the irritating one in front of her. 

She’s been led to believe that all men are like Paul O’Connor, self-serving, looking for a quiet, obedient woman to listen. But that isn’t the case for Mulder in the slightest, not in terms of conversation and certainly not in terms of the more intimate details of their relationship. 

That first time she’d gone down on him, he’d pulled her up into his lap after and kissed her breathless before informing her of just how badly he wanted to do the same for her. She’d stared at him open-mouthed, and asked what on earth he meant. The responding smile had been wicked, and the pitch of his voice as he explained things that had never even crossed her mind had been even more so, his hand slipping into her soaked underwear to demonstrate what he wanted to do with his mouth. He’d never done it before, not with anyone, but he thought about it constantly, he’d told her. She was already so captivating when he touched her like this, he’d told her. He wanted to know what she tasted like, wanted to spread her open with his tongue and –

“Did you want that salad dressing, Dana?” 

She jumps, releasing her lower lip from her teeth where she’s been crushing it hard enough to bruise. Paul is gesturing at the little cup of extra dressing on the edge of her plate, and she blinks, her heartbeat so loud between her legs that she’s shocked that he can’t hear it, too.

“They gave me a side salad with the pasta,” he explains. “But no dressing. And you don’t seem to be using yours.”

“Oh,” she says, and pushes the cup towards him, wondering if he’s noticed that she hasn’t even had a bite of her food. “Go ahead, I won’t use it.”

As Paul dumps it onto his own wilted lettuce, Dana crosses her ankles tightly and draws a deep breath in through her nose. She’d come apart on Mulder’s fingers that night, and several times since, but she hasn’t indulged his desire to _taste_ her yet, needing time to grow accustomed to the idea. 

“Watching your weight?” Paul asks. 

“I just don’t like the salad here,” she replies, smiling at him, saccharine and fake. 

“I’ll finish it off for you,” he offers.

“How kind.” She almost hopes he hears the sarcasm, but knows that he won’t. His mouth is unimaginably ugly when he eats. 

The image of Mulder rolling a sunflower seed between his teeth comes to her unprovoked, going straight between her legs, and she decides without further consideration that she’s grown accustomed enough. 

*

_September 28th, 1981_

When she finally visits Mulder’s house, it isn’t to share a bed, or to meet his parents, as she’d thought it might be. 

Instead, it’s simply because on a Monday night, with both of them exhausted and rain coming down in buckets outside, there isn’t anywhere else to go. He introduces her to his parents as a friend, as they’d discussed.

“This is Dana,” he says, his voice flat and lacking affect. The living room is dark, the curtains drawn, and the furniture looks utterly untouched by sunlight. “We went to school together. She’s helping me with that job application I told you about.” 

It doesn’t take Dana long to realize that they couldn’t care less either way. His mother barely spares her a second glance, and his father tells them absentmindedly to leave the door open and ignores Mulder when he insists, wearily, that she’s a friend. 

“Like I said, nothing to worry about,” he tells her in a low voice as they climb the stairs. “They probably won’t even remember you were here.”

“They don’t know that you already have a job?”

“I told them,” he shrugs, smiling humorlessly. “As far as they’re concerned, I’m a lost cause. They don’t pay a lot of attention when I manage to do something right.”

The wall beside Dana is dotted with picture frames, not a single photo even remotely recent. She can’t find Mulder past age ten in any of them. The moment they reach the second floor landing, she slides her hand into his, and presses her cheek softly to his bicep. 

His bedroom doesn’t feel like him at all, the floor still scattered with cardboard boxes that she can only assume are left over from their move, nearly eight months ago now. There’s a handful of posters advertising various bands and movies, but she can tell immediately that they were gifts, only tacked to the white walls for show. The small bookshelf in the corner is the fixture she likes the best, full to the bursting with sci-fi novels and philosophical texts, every one of them hopelessly dog-eared, the bottom shelf stacked high with VCRs. It’s the only thing in the room that she would immediately identify as his. 

The solitary photo is on his bedside table, set atop a hefty book on astronomy that appears to have been stolen from a Massachusetts library. Dana recognizes Samantha from the photo he keeps tucked in his wallet. In this picture, he and his little sister are younger, side by side in what must be the yard of their house back north. 

When he drops onto his bed, his head is hanging lower than she’s ever seen, and she finally understands why he’s shown so little interest in bringing her here. He’s always talked so little about his family, even though she asks. 

“Do you talk to her much, since they sent her away?” she asks, nodding at the wire frame. Samantha is something of a sensitive topic, and she hates to see him shut down, but she wants to know more.

“I still write her every week,” he says. He flops backwards, his long frame stretched out horizontally across the center of the dark blue bedspread, and then pats the spot beside him with a halfhearted smile.

Toeing off her shoes, she joins him, laying on her side and propping herself up with her elbow to see him better. 

“Does she write back?” 

“About once a month.”

Dana nods, wonders silently whether Samantha is too busy to write more often, or whether she just doesn’t care as much as he does. That seems to have been the theme in Mulder’s life – not social suffocation, like Dana experiences herself, but rather, isolation, surrounding him naturally and unforgivingly, like darkness gathering at nightfall. 

“She told me that she has lots of friends there,” Mulder says, as if he’s read her mind. “Lots of smart, like-minded girls to keep her occupied. She’s happier than she ever was back at the Vineyard.” 

“I see,” Dana says. She has no doubt that she’s wearing her concern on her face, especially when he reaches up to brush his knuckles briefly over her cheek. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “I want her to be happy. Being the favorite child wasn’t easy on her.”

“What about you?” the words come out before she can stop them.

“What about me?” 

“This isn’t easy on you,” she says, unsure whether she’s referring to his family or the loneliness that she can’t seem to drive away, no matter how she tries. She understands what it is, to be the unfavored child, fading into the background in favor of seemingly-perfect siblings when she failed to live up to expectations. 

He shrugs. His eyes are distant, and she wriggles closer, her knees nudging against his side. 

“They don’t give me as much as a second thought, most days,” he sighs. “Haven’t for a long time. My kid genius badge of honor wore off years ago, when I stopped being able to pull the grades to match it.” 

Dana nods silently, bringing up her spare hand to brush away wrinkles in his t-shirt. He’s the smartest person she knows, and _he_ knows it, too. But he’s not the kind of smart that takes well to authority, or the kind that comes equipped with diligence and hard work. He’s not even capable of faking those things.

“It’s not so bad, you know,” he says. 

“What’s not so bad?”

“Being given up on.” 

“Mulder,” she murmurs, stomach twisting. The resignation looks wrong on his face, and she has to bite her lip to resist trying to kiss it away. 

“No, I mean it,” he says. “Sam still has so many expectations to live up to, and so much disappointment when she doesn’t manage it. Me, I could jump in my car and leave tomorrow and they wouldn’t even notice I was gone.” 

There’s a humorless laugh, and Dana squeezes her eyes shut, gut aching with sympathetic pain. 

After a moment, she sits up, tugging his arm away from his body and then laying back down again, flush against his side this time, her head resting gently on his chest. He sighs, and she kisses his pectoral muscle. 

“It’s not a competition, you know,” she murmurs, winding her arm around his waist. 

“Hm?” His fingers run through her hair.

“Difficulty, suffering, all of it.” She tries to find the right words. “It’s not a competition. You’re allowed to be hurt without it taking away from your sister’s pain.” 

There’s silence as he considers. Pushing her chin forwards, Dana presses her ear to his ribcage, seeking out the faint thudding of his heart, resonating through tissue and muscle from the left side of his chest to the right. She wonders, absentmindedly, if Melissa ever struggles with being the perfect daughter. It certainly doesn’t look like she does – at least, not like Dana herself.

“I don’t know if I’m hurting,” he admits finally. “I haven’t thought about how I feel around my parents in a long time. They don’t really care.”

“Mine only care if I’m feeling the right things,” Dana says, quietly. “And I stopped being able to feel the right things. So I just stopped letting myself feel anything.” 

“That’s no way to live,” he says. 

“Most days, I couldn’t tell if I was alive at all.” The confession is so heavy, heavy enough to fall through his skin and settle in his chest cavity. Immediately, she wants to take it back, apologize profusely for burdening him, even if just for a moment. 

“You are alive,” he tells her, earnest and sincere, his palm cradling the back of her skull. “You always were.” 

“I want to believe that,” she whispers. 

“I believe it.” 

His lips press, softly, to the crown of her head. Her eyes burn, but she doesn’t cry. 

“I care,” she says, so quietly that his heartbeat seems louder. “About you, I mean. About how you feel.” 

She hears him sigh, and then his arms are encircling her, warmth surrounding her like a blanket. When he speaks again, the pain in his voice is audible, every bit weighty and vulnerable as her own secrets. 

“Don’t give up on me. Please.” 

Sucking in a breath through her nose, she buries her face in his chest, squeezing him tight as she shakes her head. 

_Never, Mulder. Never._

*

_October 4th, 1981_

“One sorry son of a bitch speaking.”

“Mulder, it’s me.”

“Maybe not so sorry after all, in that case.”

“You’ve got to stop answering the phone that way.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“How do you always know it’ll be me, even before I tell you?”

“Deductive reasoning.”

“Deductive reasoning.”

“Well, as I’m sure you know, I think about you all the time.”

“Likewise.”

“Since I’m already thinking about you constantly, I tend to wonder every hour or so what you’re doing, based on what I recall about your schedule and your habits. It’s not that hard to deduce from there when you’ll decide you want to talk.”

“I don’t suppose this deductive reasoning allows you to anticipate what I want to talk about, too?”

“Sometimes. Depends on the day.”

“How about right now?”

“Dana, are you asking me if I know why you called me?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you ‘didn’t need a reason to call me’.”

“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have one.”

“Well, considering we just saw each other last night, I could reasonably deduce that you’re calling for a reason related to that.”

“Hm.”

“Probably either to come through with the final devastating blow to finish out our argument about nature versus nurture in terms of personality disorders, or to talk about something less than family friendly.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Since there’s no zinger about narcissism coming my way, I’m assuming it’s the second thing.”

“Yes. It’s the second thing.”

“By all means, speak your mind, little lady.”

“Watch it, Mulder.”

“Hey, just teasing.”

“I suppose that our… _activities_ have gotten me thinking about my own reluctance to take certain steps.”

“How so?”

“It just seems that all my life, I’ve been so convinced of the sanctity of intercourse.”

“Incredible how you manage to make sex sound clinical.”

“Maybe sanctity isn’t the right word.”

“Hm?”

“Not the _sanctity_ of intercourse, I mean. More like the weight and importance of it.”

“Go on.”

“They teach us that it goes hand in hand with marriage, as you know. And I’ve always seen marriage as an end to my independence, almost like a death. If I were to get married, I wouldn’t be my own in the eyes of the church any longer – I would be a piece of my husband. I wouldn’t even have my own name.”

“That’s really such an antiquated tradition. I’ve never understood why everyone doesn’t hyphenate the two last names, or just keep the ones they were given.”

“I’ve seen plenty of weddings, and they’re all the same. Carbon copy vows, poofy white dresses, scripture read off in a drone by Father McCue. None of it ever seemed particularly tangible or important to me, and so I suppose I always saw the consummation of the marriage as the ultimate end of the wife’s personhood.” 

“Dana…”

“I learned about it in whispers, and I thought that one day, if I were to get married, that would be how my personhood ended, too. In my husband’s bed, doing my duty as a wife, regardless of how I felt about it.”

“That’s not how sex should be at all, Dana.”

“I know it isn’t, Mulder. But somehow, I’ve convinced myself of this sick idea, that intercourse is supposed to be some kind of painful ritual sacrifice of the self, at the hands of a man I don’t care about.”

“God.”

“I don’t need you pitying me, Mulder.”

“No, no, that’s not it. I’m not pitying you.”

“What was that sigh, then?”

“I’m _angry_.”

“At me?”

“No, not at all. I’m angry _for_ you.”

“Oh.”

“It’s just all wrong, Dana. Everything they told you and everything you told yourself.”

“I know. I think I’m finally starting to figure out just how wrong it is.”

“I don’t want you to see anything we do as any kind of sacrifice. Dana, if I hurt you, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

“I don’t see anything we’ve done as a sacrifice, Mulder. Not even when I only focus on you and your pleasure.”

“You have to tell me if anything ever feels wrong. Promise me.”

“Mulder, _nothing_ feels wrong with you. You’re the reason I’ve been able to process all of this.”

“Promise me, Dana.”

“If anything ever feels wrong, I promise I’ll tell you.”

“Okay.”

“I just don’t think that anything could feel wrong with you, that’s all. This thing, this idea that I’ve got about intercourse, about sex, it’s just another cross to bear that I’m tired of weighing on me.”

“We don’t ever have to do it, Dana.”

“What?”

“I’m not just waiting for you to tell me it’s okay.”

“I’m not following, Mulder.”

“I don’t want to have sex with you unless it’s something you want, Dana. And if it’s never something you want, then we never have to go all the way.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not something anyone needs, no matter what they say. It’s not some ultimate act. It’s just sex, and if you don’t want it, then it isn’t for us.”

“But, Mulder…”

“Yeah?”

“I do.”

“You do?”

“I _do_ want it. You make me want it.”

“But if you see the act in such a negative way, then how could it ever be something you feel good about?”

“I don’t want to see it that way anymore, Mulder. I just can’t figure out how to reframe it in my head, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to until you help me.”

“And by help you, you mean…”

“I mean until we have sex, Mulder.”

“So is this a proposition?”

“I don’t know, that’s the problem. I don’t feel ready.”

“You want to have sex, but you can’t get rid of the idea that it’s a bad thing, but you don’t know how you’ll get rid of that idea without doing it, which you’re not ready for.”

“Maybe we should just rip off the band-aid and get it over with.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no, Dana. I’m not going to risk doing something you’re not ready for, and I’m not going to turn something that should feel good into ripping off the band-aid.”

“Then what do you propose we do?”

“I guess we should give it time. We don’t have to make any decisions now. We can keep going like we’ve been.”

“But what if it never gets better?”

“You said you weren’t sure you’d be able to get over this until I help you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what’s the urgency? Can’t I help you how I’ve been doing already? If you’ve realized this much, then eventually, we can get rid of this idea too, without rushing into anything.”

“Maybe.”

“Dana?”

“Mulder?”

“Will you just trust me?”

“I do trust you, Mulder.”

“Then let me keep doing what you want, and what you’re comfortable with. We’ll cross any other bridges when we come to them.”

“Okay. We can wait.”

“Thank you. We can find plenty of other things to do with our time together, you know.”

“You are rather good at certain other things.”

“Rather good?”

“You know what I mean, Mulder.”

“You can’t even indulge my fishing for compliments after I’ve gone down on you?”

“I’ve already confessed to wanting to go all the way despite years of repression, Mulder. I think that ought to be compliment enough.”

“Dana?”

“Mulder?”

“Thank you for telling me all of that. I know it can’t have been the easiest thing.”

“I never imagined I’d say it out loud. It was easier than I thought it would be.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I was telling you.”

*

_October 17th, 1981_

Tonight, Mulder’s driven them all the way to Hutchinson, at her request. The city isn’t the biggest one in the area, but it’s heavily populated nonetheless, and the two of them are small and blissfully insignificant in the crowded lot where he’s parked the car. 

“This is great, no one will even give us a second glance,” Mulder says as he pulls her out onto the blacktop, both of her hands in his. “Well, at least, not me. I can’t imagine you not catching a few eyes looking like that.”

“Mulder,” she admonishes, and doesn’t mean it. The anonymity is nice, but not the reason why she’s chosen this particular location for his belated birthday date.

“Maybe I’ll get some dirty looks from people who resent my being on your arm,” he adds, tugging her closer, one hand resting on her lower back, the heat of his touch palpable even through her coat. “Jealousy is a disease, you know.”

“Actually, I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘envy is a sin’,” Dana says. “Unless you’re planning on getting jealous over people I’ve never spoken to eyeing me on the street?”

“I might,” he admits. “Would you blame me? You’re a catch.”

“Mulder, we’ve only just arrived, and you’re already inventing me secret admirers,” Dana laughs. “Besides, I feel like you’re ignoring the real benefits of our anonymity.” 

“And what’s that?”

Stretching up on her toes, she smiles at him as if about to share a secret, and then tugs his head down until she can capture his lips with hers, lacing her fingers through his hair. His hands are twins on her waist, pulling her flush against him as he cranes his neck to meet the fervor of her kiss, ever indulgent and friendly, big enough to lift her up to meet him but instead letting her coax him into whatever shape she fancies. 

His face is open and starstruck when she lets him go, and she rubs her palms over his cheeks, his neck, his shoulders, the deceptive solidness of his chest. One well-placed push, she thinks, and he would stumble to his knees. It makes her want to giggle. 

“I love you,” he tells her, deathly serious, as if he’s only just figured it out. 

“News to me,” she deadpans, and he grins, kissed stupid and panting softly above her. “Are you ready for your surprise, or not?”

“Give a guy a minute to catch his breath, will you?” 

“Always so demanding.”

“Says the woman who insisted I buy her her own snack for the car ride and then ate all of my sunflower seeds anyway,” he retorts, his eyes sparkling.

“They taste like you, we had to go on a drive the second I got in your car,” she shrugs. “It’s been days since I got to kiss you. I was only compensating.”

“Dana,” he says, his face going soft again. 

“Would you have preferred that I grab you by the hair and put my tongue in your mouth on the interstate?” 

“I’d have crashed the car at 100 miles per hour if you did that,” Mulder says.

“And that’s why I ate all your sunflower seeds instead.”

“It would’ve been one hell of a way to go, though. Maybe even worth the severe physical trauma and subsequent death.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she chuckles. 

“You’re a dangerous woman,” he tells her.

“I love you,” she replies easily, just to see his eyes widen and his mouth fall open. 

When he doesn’t reply imminently, she reaches up, tucking her fingers under his chin to push his jaw shut again.

“You’re very cute when you’re tongue-tied,” she informs him, pressing her thumb to his lips. “And, I assume, still perfectly able to walk.”

Mulder kisses the pad of her thumb, and then intertwines his fingers with hers and lets their joined hands fall to their sides. She starts to lead him through the parked cars.

“You’re really not going to tell me where we’re going?” He’s been bugging her with questions like this all car ride, making outlandish guesses and needling her for information. He’d asked over the phone on his actual birthday, too, the moment she hinted that she had plans. 

“You surprise me with date locations on a weekly basis, Mulder,” she says. “I think you can handle being the one surprised this time. After all, it’s a special occasion.”

“But what if I don’t want to be surprised?” He asks, his eyebrows lifted. 

“Well, that’s completely beside the point.” She bumps their shoulders together, looking up at him. “I never told you I wanted to be surprised, did I?”

“But have I ever disappointed you?” 

Dana tilts her head to the side, pretending to consider, and he scoffs loudly. “That’s also beside the point,” she declares. “And I’ll have you know that I’m offended by the implication that I’m going to disappoint you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dana,” he says dismissively, placing a kiss on her forehead. “I know you’d never disappoint me.

“That’s more like it,” she smiles. “And besides, you _do_ want to be surprised, so why bother considering any alternatives?”

“Alternatives are always worth considering,” he says, and she rolls her eyes. “Has anyone ever told you that your sarcastic, skeptical nature is caustic and grating?” 

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a pain in the ass?”

“ _That_ , Dana, is absolutely beside the point.” 

“Convenient,” she notes, and he laughs, and then stops in his tracks with a soft gasp.

He breathes her name, his head tilted back as he looks up at the building in front of them, patting her arm with his free hand as if she doesn’t already know where they are. It’s larger than she’d imagined, flat sloped roof and spire rising into the twilight. The white of the structure is bright under the parking lot lights, but Mulder’s eyes are brighter still, his lips slightly parted as he stares. 

“The Cosmosphere,” he murmurs, tapping her bicep again, more urgently. “Dana, it’s the Cosmosphere.”

“I know, Mulder,” she chuckles, squeezing his hand. “I brought us here, remember?”

“I’ve wanted to go forever.” He fixes her with his wide-eyed, enamored stare. Dana is struck, suddenly, with the situationally inappropriate realization that it’s same way he looks at her when she gives him head. “I’ve never been to a planetarium before.”

“So you’ve said.” 

“I love you,” he says, his tone still awestruck. Revelatory, just like weeks before, when she’d finally hooked her knees over his shoulders and let him return the favor.

Grabbing the collar of his coat, she pulls him down again, presses her lips to his sweetly. “So you’ve said,” she repeats, eyes narrowed with affection. “Happy birthday, stardust boy.”

*

_November 19th, 1981_

Dana’s windows are thrust wide open to the chill, and the light has all but vanished from the sky by the time Melissa lets herself in. Surprised, Dana kicks her way out from under the covers to swing her legs over the side of her bed, and Melissa pads over to sit beside her without a word.

In that moment, but for the lack of long sleeved, high collared nightgowns, they could’ve been girls again, inventing secrets and making pacts in the high, cold western moonlight. Prairie girls together, sharing everything even when they didn’t get along, just like the Ingalls. 

The memory tugs at Dana’s heart. She’d wanted to be her sister, once. The lack of laughter, of warmth between them is disquieting.

“What is it, Missy?” she murmurs, deciding not to lead with aggression this time.

“Luke’s going to propose.” Her sister’s voice is barely a whisper. 

“I know.”

“I don’t want to marry him,” Melissa says, hand white-knuckled on the quilt. “Dana, I don’t want to marry him.”

The tree in the backyard has grown since their childhood, and the cool light flooding in the window lands on them dappled and latticed. Dana glances at her sister, and is reminded of confessional, the criss-cross of shadows over the skin of her chest as she lies to the priest.

“He’s almost thirty, and he wants a big family,” she continues. “And I could cope with that, you know? I could be okay. I came to terms with that idea years ago.”

“I know.” Dana tries not to sound too disdainful.

“But I can’t cope with how I feel when he kisses me.” Melissa’s voice is softer than ever as she lets the words slip out. “I thought that it was just Richie, because he used too much tongue and always tried to get his hands under my shirt. Before that, I thought it was just Jacob, because we were young, then. That was what I told myself when I broke up with both of them. But I don’t think that’s it at all.”

“Missy…” Dana mumbles, starting to realize what her sister might mean. She doesn’t look up again, knowing it’ll be that much harder to speak if she does. Instead, she finds Melissa’s shaking hand with hers.

“It’s just as bad with Luke, Dana,” she whispers. “And if I marry him, it won’t end at kissing, not anymore. And when I think about that… I think that there’s something very, very wrong with me.”

The words linger, quiet but weighted, and Dana’s stomach turns with guilt as the realization of how badly she’s misjudged her sister’s reactions hits her. What she’s saying sounds similar to Dana’s own negative response to the idea of intercourse, but the implications go far, far deeper. _Leviticus 18:22._ The most hateful, small-minded verse of them all. She chews on her lower lip, brings up her free hand to fiddle with the cold cross settled heavy around her neck. 

“Maybe I need to marry him,” Missy says, and Dana can feel her shivering. “Maybe it’ll save my soul. Stop me from – from losing my way. I’ve heard people say that it’s just a disease, that you can be cured, if you –” 

“I’ve done things with him,” Dana interrupts, before her sister can go any further, the nausea climbing up her throat. It’s her turn to confess. In the light of the sins of the flesh that she’s committed herself, maybe Missy will realize that there is no such thing. 

Missy stares, her mouth opening slightly.

“Not Paul,” she says, and Dana shakes her head. All the memories of Paul’s clumsy, sickening kisses have been relegated to the back of her mind.

“Not Paul. And not _the_ thing, either.”

The rasp of Missy’s inhale is audible in the silence of the room.

“He cares more for how I feel than he does,” she murmurs, not daring to say Mulder’s name out loud. “He – he touches me, and he looks at me like it’s something sacred while he does. There are so many things I didn’t know, so many things I can’t get enough of.”

The memory alone makes Dana shift, the bruise left on the inside of her thigh smarting as she squeezes her legs together. Mulder’s hair soft between her fingers, his hands solid and tight around her hips, his mouth obsessive and slick against her. 

“They told us so many times that sex was for them, not us,” Dana says urgently, needing Missy to understand what she isn’t saying. “To make babies, to grow the flock, more voices to spread the word. That it was sinful otherwise.”

“I know.”

“But they lied, Missy,” she whispers, finding her sister’s eyes. She isn’t sure which of them she’s trying to convince. “They _lied_. There’s so much more than that, so much more than the version of sex that we hear about. And I want all of it with him.” 

Up comes Missy’s hand, slender fingers fiddling with her own cross. The nervous shift of her gaze, away from Dana, around the room. They’re so different, the two of them, and yet somehow exactly the same. Heads and tails, night and day, shaped into opposites. Mulder would tell her they were made of identical stardust, philosophize the reasons for the divergence in wants, in instincts, in lives. Missy would like him so much, if she ever actually got to meet him.

“I don’t want any of it with Luke,” Missy murmurs. “The thought of it makes me sick.”

_I’m sorry_ , Dana wants to say. _I’m sorry I thought so little of you for so long. I’m sorry I didn’t see you suffering, too._

“Then turn him down,” she says. “And go find the person who you do want it with.”

“But what’ll happen to you?”

Tears burn in the corners of Dana’s eyes at the concern in her sister’s voice, and she lays her head on Missy’s shoulder, tentative and careful. 

“I’ll be okay,” she says. “I’m not alone, and I trust him. The two of us will figure it out.”

“What if you don’t?” Missy’s voice is thick. “You know that if I turn Luke down, I’ll have to leave.”

“You need to leave,” Dana says. “You’re not sick, Missy. There’s nothing wrong with you. You need to get out before they convince you otherwise.”

The two of them fall into silence, and Dana finds herself matching her sister’s unsteady breathing, Missy’s hand tight around hers. Closing her eyes, she remembers being little girls, seven and eight, daydreaming of a future where they could be people so different that no one would recognize them. She imagines them sitting like this in ten years, on a different bed, hundreds of miles away, the kind of love that means something resting saltwater-heavy on twin backs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And as the seasons change and the days get shorter, things get darker. I didn't use one of Scully's real exes because none of them fit, in my opinion. So here you have him: fictional Paul O'Connor. However, the Cosmosphere is real, and it is in Hutchinson, Kansas. It was renovated beyond just the original planetarium in 1980, and while I couldn't find any exact articles about the reopening, I'm sure there were several and that Mulder would've read them. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr @kittenscully, where this is also being posted! Please do tell me what you thought via comments/asks/tags/messages, feedback literally means the world.


	5. Winter

_December 11th, 1981._

“Tinsel, Mulder?” Dana stifles a giggle, watching him drape it across his arms. “Really?”

“‘Tis the season,” he announces with mock seriousness. He scoops up a wad of glittering strands, two-handed, his own sweater shimmering like he’d coated himself with tinfoil, and lays them ceremoniously atop her head. 

“Mulder!” she exclaims, scrambling to grab ahold of all of the tinsel as it slides, inevitably, down her hair to the floor. “You’re gonna get us kicked out of another store!”

She shoves the handfuls back into the cubby they’d come from, and then starts picking pieces off of his sweater. Ostensibly, they’d come to the mall today to see a movie, but they hadn’t found a single listing that interested them, and had ended up wandering into holiday sections of various stores, instead, driven by Mulder’s morbid fascination with commercial Christian tackiness. 

After a series of spur of the moment decisions, they’d gotten themselves kicked out of Sears. It wasn’t _really_ his fault. He’d been the one hooking ornaments into his sweater, sure, but it was her actions which had resulted in several baubles shattering on the floor. 

Winter is so much different when she’s around him. The increasingly impenetrable silence from home lifts the moment she sees his face, and for once, she feels it as a relief rather than an absence. She loves it, the noise of his presence and the freedom to speak, just as she loves him. 

“Dana Katherine,” he says, his eyes sparkling.

She finds comfort in him, in the way he smiles and brings her to life. Not in the silence. Not anymore. 

“Yes, _Fox_?”

They’re _not_ going to get kicked out of Macy’s, as well. Dana does have Christmas gifts to buy, and she’s determined to prove to herself that she can resist pressing Mulder against the box-crowded shelves and kissing him stupid. At least, for a little while. 

“For a girl who celebrates Christmas, you’re severely lacking in the festive spirit,” he informs her. “Where’s your jolliness? Your sense of good cheer? Your fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la –”

She whacks him in the chest with a giant picture book version of _The Night Before Christmas_ , interrupting his singing before it can get off the ground, and he lets out an _oof_ before dissolving into good-natured laughter.

“For a guy who _doesn’t_ celebrate Christmas, you’re full of good cheer,” she retorts sarcastically, depositing the book back on the shelf. 

“I’ve always been fascinated by the distortion of traditional Christian and pagan practices,” Mulder says, helping her to pick the tinsel off of his sweater. “Did you know that lavish holiday gift-giving is actually a tradition which goes back to Saturnalia celebrations in ancient Rome?”

“I did know that, actually,” she says. “Modern-day Catholics justify it by using the story of the three wise men.” 

“Doesn’t that put some dated constraints on what you can give each other?”

“If you’re asking whether my thirteen year old brother gets frankincense and myrrh in his stocking,” she says, reaching up to snag a piece of tinsel from just under his collar before holding it aloft with a raised eyebrow. “Then the answer is no.”

“That probably would set a bad example, huh?” he muses. “It wouldn’t be very wholesome to give a teenage boy anything that can be…ignited.” 

Dana looks up at him, not bothering to hide her amusement. “I don’t think frankincense and myrrh would give you a very good high.”

“Ah, but your little brother wouldn’t know that,” he counters, catching her hands on his chest and pressing his thumbs into her palms. 

“Well, there’s also the legend of the actual St. Nicholas,” she says. 

“Oh?” He brings her hands up, laying them on his shoulders before winding his own arm around her waist. 

“He was wealthy.”

“I see.” He runs his knuckles over her cheek, her lips, tilting her chin up to make her look at him.

“As the story goes, he’d give the poorer citizens of his town gifts,” she says, scratching her nails through the close-cropped hairs at the base of his neck. “And when daughters couldn’t afford to marry, he’d give them the money that they needed.”

“I’ve never been able to understand why marriage itself requires any sort of money,” Mulder comments, getting a distant look in his eye. “Dowries just don’t make sense. Doesn’t striking out on your own with your new spouse require enough money as it is?” 

“You’ll never guess how St. Nicholas delivered the money.” She tugs gently at his hair, pulling his attention back to her. 

“Oh, do tell.”

“Guess.”

“From an oversized red velvet sack?” 

She laughs, shakes her head. His thumb brushes over her lips, and she bares her teeth playfully, pretending to bite at it. 

“While riding through the sky on a sleigh driven by eight shameless reindeer bullies and one poor reindeer victim who’s been guilt-tripped into leading the team by none other than our dear old St. Nick, despite years of latent trauma?”

“I really can’t stand you,” Dana says. _You make me so happy_ , she means. 

“Hey, you asked me to guess.” He shrugs innocently, smiling down at her, and she gnaws on her lip in an increasingly futile attempt to resist darting up for a kiss. 

“He delivered the money by dropping it into their chimneys,” she tells him in a low voice, as if it’s a secret, swaying them from side to side. 

“Ah, of course.”

“ _Obv_ iously.”

“He must’ve been a very agile fellow,” Mulder says, his head lowering closer to hers. “Climbing up houses to drop loose change down chimneys left and right, with no team of trusty flying reindeer to help him out.”

“I suppose he must’ve been.” 

“Certainly not the fat Father Christmas that we all know and love.” 

“His feast day is December 6th, as I remember,” she says, knowing that he doesn’t care in the slightest. “That’s probably why he was associated with Christmas.”

“He must spend his off time gettin’ physical at the gym,” he comments, grinning at her lopsidedly. “Do they have gym memberships up at the North Pole?”

“He was actually from what’s now considered Turkey.” 

“That’s not the right climate for reindeer.”

“I don’t know who came up with that particular story, but you certainly can’t blame us for it,” she mumbles. “Us being Catholics.”

“Are you even Catholic anymore?” he asks, his second hand joining the first to palm her spine, pulling her closer. 

“By heritage.” 

“Does Catholicism work that way? I thought it was just Judaisim.”

“Culturally, then. I was baptized. By baptism.”

“So you can be _culturally_ Catholic even if you’re not a practicing Catholic?” he sounds genuinely curious, but his face is so close to hers, his hands sliding so low on her back, and he must know she won’t be able to give a fully coherent answer.

“I guess so,” she manages. 

“Fascinating.” He’s teasing her. She really, truly can’t stand him.

“Shut up.”

Mulder opens his mouth, undoubtedly to make another clever retort, but she surges up to kiss him before he can get a single word out. His sweater is rough, his body heat soaking through the wool, and she rubs up against him instinctively, catlike, as she presses soft pecks to his mouth. He hums against her lips, sounding all too pleased with himself.

He’s smiling at her sloppily when she withdraws enough to see his face, his chest heaving slightly as he catches his breath. 

“I love you,” he tells her, utterly enamored. 

She places a kiss on his slick lower lip, and finds that she doesn’t mind her own lack of restraint in the slightest. Unwinding her arms from around his neck, she slides them under his to hug his middle instead, leaning in closer to fit herself neatly under his chin, cheek pressed to his chest.

“Are you going to get something for Samantha? You’d have to ship it off soon if you wanted it to reach her in the next couple of weeks.”

“I figured it was kind of a given that she doesn’t celebrate Christmas, either,” he chuckles.

“I read that sometimes Hanukkah celebrations in the U.S. involve gift-giving,” she says. His sweater is coarse against her skin. “Because of the pervasive cultural impact of – what did you call them? Distorted traditional Christian and pagan practices?” 

“Well, we don’t celebrate Hanukkah, either,” he replies. His chin rests on top of her head. “Culturally Jewish, but not practicing.”

“I think you mean Jewish by heritage.” She grins into his chest, and he hugs her tighter. 

“I can’t stand you,” he parrots, his voice soft and affectionate.

She giggles, burrowing her face into his sweater. He runs so hot, all the time, and she absorbs his warmth every time she touches him, heat conduction from his body to hers, thermal equilibrium lasting only as long as they’re connected at the hip. It makes her so very reluctant to let go, let the cold settle in her bones again.

“I wish Sam was coming home,” Mulder admits quietly. “We used to stay up late and make fun of the Christmas movies on TV together.”

“I think Missy’s going to leave soon,” Dana says, muffled by the wool. “It won’t be long now before the proposal.”

“I guess we’ll be in the same boat, then.” He sighs.

*

_January 17th, 1982_

"Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen."

“Amen,” Dana murmurs, crossing herself mechanically. The gesture means nothing to her now, but that fact has long since stopped bothering her.

They’re alone this Sunday, just the five of them, in a silence that grows more uncomfortable each week. The chill from outside has crept into the house. Her father unfolds his napkin. Her mother smiles as she dishes out food, nervous eyes and a million questions hidden underneath. 

“How are things with Luke?” Is the lucky winner. 

Missy’s fork clatters to the table. “They’re great, mom.”

“Good, good,” Maggie says. “And Paul?”

“Perfect,” Dana answers, taking Missy’s hand under the table. Her voice doesn’t sound like hers.

Neither brother has proposed yet, but every day, the two of them wait with bated breath, allies and even friends for the first time in years, brought together by a shared fear. Missy has a packed suitcase in her closet and Dana’s permission to take the car that’s ostensibly theirs to share. It’s not as if she’s used it since meeting Mulder anyway. 

She’s offered to take Dana with her, but as far as Dana’s concerned, it isn’t an option. She needs her diploma, and she needs Mulder. Soon, she’ll talk about it with him for real, start to make a potential escape plan. 

“Goodness, it’s all so perfect. I’m starting to wonder if they’ve got a younger sister,” Maggie comments, with a tentative laugh. 

Charlie looks up with a start, his face a mask of confusion, and Dana grits her teeth against the urge to snap, stares down at her plate. 

“He’s barely fourteen,” Missy says tightly, and Dana’s head shoots up. “Leave him alone.” 

Maggie gapes at her. 

“Don’t talk to your mother that way.” 

“Charlie is barely fourteen,” Missy repeats clearly, staring their father dead in the eye. “He’s a child. I’m not setting him up with a date that suits the family preferences like I did Dana.” 

Dana catches Charlie’s eye across the table, his awestruck expression mirroring her own. 

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Melissa,” says their father. “But as long as you are under this roof, you will treat your mother and myself with the respect we are due.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Missy says coldly. “I thought that’s what I was doing.”

The silence that follows is deafening, Maggie’s eyes wide and shell-shocked. Missy’s fingers are clenched around Dana’s so tightly that they tingle from lack of circulation, the only outward indication of her nerves. Their father sets down his silverware, and meets Missy’s proud gaze, his own face impassive and stony.

“Go to your room,” he booms.

“I’m an adult,” Missy replies calmly. “I’m not a child who can be ordered around anymore.”

“You will go to your room, or you will get out of this house.” 

Impossibly, Maggie’s eyes widen even further. Her mouth opens, as if she wants to intervene, but she seems to think the better of it, sealing her lips once again. 

Dana spares a glance down at her cross, sure that it must be bouncing on her chest from the rapid increase of her heart rate. All this time, she’s been so sure that she’d be the only one to draw the line in the sand, swing shut the heavy chapel doors behind her and leave her family behind with no hopes of returning. 

Missy holds their father’s gaze. She’s braver than Dana’s ever been, and Dana wants to ask her where she went for all of these years. 

Fruitlessly, Dana wishes again that she’d never stopped sharing secrets with her sister. Maybe, if she had given Missy the benefit of the doubt, they could’ve been allies all along. Maybe, neither of them would’ve had to become frost-bitten, solid and straight-backed with any trace of life hidden away, like trees in winter. 

She gives Missy’s fingers a squeeze, shakes her head almost imperceptibly from side to side. _Not yet._

Wordlessly, Missy lets go of her hand, and stands. Dana watches her all the way up the stairs, tightly wired and ready to burst. The table is quiet, the only sound from the cold wind outside. 

“Dad?” Dana says after a moment, flinching as she breaks the silence. 

“What, Dana?” He replies coldly. 

“May I be excused?” 

His face is unreadable, but she knows exactly what he’s thinking. Allowing her to leave the table would be yet more evidence of his lack of control over the women of his family. 

“My stomach is just so upset after _that_ ,” she murmurs, lowering her head in a false show of submission. “I don’t feel very well.”

“Alright,” he concedes, his approving relief palpable. “You may be excused. I’m sure we’re all feeling unsettled.”

Maggie is nodding with agreement. Dana gets to her feet and heads up the stairs after Missy, and as she glances over her shoulder, she sees her mother’s head still moving, up-and-down, up-and-down, nervous and jerky. 

She knows without checking that Missy is already in her room, the one they used to share. She doesn’t knock. 

Missy isn’t sitting on her bed. Instead, she’s standing in front of the west-facing window, hands balled up tightly at her sides, the sky darkening twilight behind her. She looks at Dana with clear eyes, only her trembling chin betraying her instability. 

It only takes a few quick steps to cross the room. Face to face, Dana looks up at her, resolves to be just as brave when the time comes. 

“Did I do the right thing?” Missy asks, tentative. “Dana, have I made a terrible mistake?”

Unable to stop herself, Dana wraps her arms tightly around her sister’s waist, burying her face in her neck. The rush of emotion in her chest is almost overwhelming, and as Missy’s arms drape around her shoulders, she has to hold her breath to keep from crying. It’s been so long, but the contact is still achingly familiar, like finding an old doll under the bed and recognizing her by feel alone, the texture of her dress and the frizzy curls of her hair, well loved and handled. 

“You did what I want to do every day,” she whispers. “I should’ve done it a long time ago. We didn’t both have to be ruined.”

“No, Dana,” Missy murmurs, squeezing her tightly. “No. _I_ should’ve done it a long time ago. I should’ve stood up for you like that, instead of pretending to be perfect and playing matchmaker like they wanted me to.”

There’s no stopping the tears now. Dana doesn’t even bother to try, sobbing silently into Missy’s shoulder as Missy starts to rock her gently, like a child. 

“I’m sorry for doing that. I’m sorry for leaving you alone.” She keeps rocking, side to side, side to side, soothing and warm. “I’m sorry, Dana. I’m so sorry.”

*

_January 28th, 1982_

“You’ve reached the Mulder residence. Tragically, there’s no one available to take your call right now, so leave a message and we probably won’t get back to you. Actually, don’t bother leaving a message. No one in this family cares enough about communication to –”

“Mulder, it’s me.”

“Oh, hello, Dana!”

“What if it had been someone else?”

“I’d have come up with some explanation.”

“Someone’s got too much time on his hands.”

“Well, I’ve been snowed out of work three days in a row, Dana.”

“As you’ve said.”

“And snowed out of seeing my girlfriend. Even though neither of us have anything better to do.”

“That one’s a mutual struggle, Mulder.”

“Aren’t you bored?”

“Bored isn’t the word I’d use. More like suffocated.”

“Oh, baby.”

“Mulder, I don’t know how I lived with these people for years without any escape or respite.”

“I’ve got my car keys in my pocket, you know. I could try –”

“The roads are ice, Mulder. You could not. Do you have any idea what the statistics are on driving in these kinds of conditions?”

“I was also watching the news last night, so, yes. But Dana –”

“Mulder.”

“I know, I know. I just want to see you.”

“I used to love winter, you know.”

“Past tense?”

“Well, I used to be very comfortable in the quiet. It was a good excuse for shutting out the rest of the world.”

“Ah.”

“People don’t expect you to be happy when it’s cold and dark.”

“No, they don’t.”

“I think maybe I’ve just gotten accustomed to being happier, recently.”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve made me happier, Mulder.”

“God, Dana…”

“What, why is that funny?”

“I just didn’t think you would actually say it, that’s all.”

“I barely said anything, Mulder.”

“But I know that you meant it. I could hear it in your voice.”

“And I don’t usually mean what I say?”

“It’s more that you don’t often say what you mean, underneath it all. It always takes me by surprise when you do.”

“Mulder, I –”

“And I don’t see that as a bad thing, Dana, not at all. It’s actually one of the things that made me fall in love with you.” 

“Oh, Mulder.”

“It makes me want to know you so well that I can read you just by how you look at me, or touch me. Just by how your voice sounds over the phone, like this. And I mean that.”

“I know. You always say what you mean.”

“And you like that about me.”

“Do I?”

“Absolutely.”

“Mulder, do you know what my least favorite thing is about talking on the phone with you is?”

“I’ve got an idea, but I’d rather not guess.”

“I can always hear when you’re grinning, but I can’t kiss you to wipe the smug look off of your face.”

“You know, Dana, if you’re trying to convince me not to drive over there on the icy roads, you’re not doing a very good job of it.”

“Well, did you guess right, or not?”

“I did. I may not know you as well as I want to, but I doubt I ever will, and I do know you pretty well.”

“Mulder, you know me better than anyone.”

“And I plan on spending the rest of my life learning you even better.”

“Mulder…”

“Yeah?”

“You can’t drive over here. I won’t let you, not with all the side roads.”

“I can feel the ‘but’ coming.”

“But the road to town ought to be cleared pretty well by now, and I could make the walk.”

“Letting you walk all the way to town would be so ungentlemanly of me.”

“I imagine that crashing your car would be far more ungentlemanly.”

“Well, I can’t argue with that.”

“You’re not going to make me convince you, are you?”

“No. Please walk into town. If I don’t get to kiss your little red nose in the next half hour I might _literally_ die.”

“Don’t you dare. I’m counting on a kiss much less chaste than that as soon as I get my hands on you.”

“So it’s true what they say about redheads being feisty.”

“Watch it, or I’ll slap you instead.”

“I love you.”

“Stop trying to soften me up.”

“This is what I meant when I said you never say what you mean.”

“I love you too, Mulder.”

*

_February 6th, 1982_

The house is lonely against the twilight as Dana walks up the driveway. She squints, spotting the sheriff’s sedan and her mother’s van parked against the house. There’s no sign of Missy’s car, probably still missing from her trip into town earlier in the day. 

Dana’s stomach turns, and she increases her pace.

She imagines Mulder, already pulling back onto the main road, his lips still bruised from dozens of kisses and his eyes distant and sparkling. The heat of his touch is already seeping out of her, even bundled up in her coat, and she wraps her arms around her waist, missing it desperately. 

The stillness creeps up on her as she approaches, like a chill down her spine. Two steps up onto the porch, creaky with frost and night, the white door somehow unfamiliar even after years of opening and closing it. 

The moment she turns the door handle, she knows that something is wrong. 

There’s one light on in the house, and it’s her father’s reading lamp, deceptively warm and comfortable across his stony features. On the couch, her mother is in shadow, the whites of her eyes huge and scared, her hands folded prayer-like over the woolen blanket in her lap.

On the floor, Charlie, timid, chin tucked into his chest. 

“What’s wrong?” Dana asks, her voice barely a rasp, even though she already knows.

“Luke proposed,” Maggie murmurs. 

“That’s great, isn’t it?” Dana can’t even fake enthusiasm, not with the tightness in her lungs.

Maggie shakes her head, back-and-forth, back-and-forth, mechanical and twitchy. A wind-up toy with faulty wiring. 

“Mom,” Dana says, her voice low. She needs confirmation. “Where’s Missy?”

“Gone,” she whispers.

“Gone where?”

“She didn’t say.”

Dana closes her eyes. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Not without her saying goodbye. 

“She won’t be coming back,” her father says, his voice emotionless. “She ran out her last prospect with Luke. I won’t have her living in my house, unmarried by choice.”

Maggie’s eyelashes flutter, her knuckles bone white in her lap. She says nothing. She does not unclench her hands to cross herself, even though Dana knows she wants to.

In quick motions, Dana sheds her coat, the nausea creeping up her throat. The house is cold and unforgiving, more than it’s ever been, and she moves towards the staircase, unwilling to sit vigil with her family. Even the stairs barely creak under her feet, as if they, too, are scared of making too much noise. 

“Where are you going, Dana?” Maggie rasps hoarsely.

“To bed,” she whispers. “I feel ill.”

When she clicks on the side table lamp in her room, she spots it immediately – the corner of her bedspread, folded down neatly, just enough to reveal her pillow. The memory of Missy reaching underneath to grab the Apollo 11 keychain is as clear in her mind as if it were yesterday. 

She slips her hand into the spot beneath, withdrawing a folded piece of paper. Her name is scrawled in Missy’s cursive across the front, not a hint of hesitation in the letters.

> _Dear Dana,_
> 
> _I’m sorry to go like this, without saying goodbye. I wanted to stay at least until your birthday, but as I know you will understand, that wasn’t an option. If I have one regret in leaving, it’s that I told you the truth too late to make up for the years I spent lying to you, pushing you away, and watching you slowly close yourself off. I was scared, and I hope you can forgive me. You deserved a better sister, and a better friend. I’m glad you found that friend in someone else. It’s only in the last year that I’ve started to see the Dana I once knew, and I’m grateful I got to hold her hand again before I had to leave. All I ask is that you never hide her away again._
> 
> _I have the suitcase you packed for me, as well as the money I saved. It will cover me for several months, just as we estimated, so I don’t want you to worry for me. I’ve always been the dreamier out of the two of us, but I’m doing my best to think like you, and hoping that will keep me safe. I will send you a letter with a phone number, in a nondescript envelope, when I find a more permanent address._
> 
> _This is not goodbye, Dana. I will see you again, I can feel it. I know you say you don’t believe in gut feelings, but I also know that you don’t say what you mean. I hope you feel it, too._
> 
> _Missy_

The letter is unsmudged by tears, and Dana drops it on the bed, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes to stop herself from ruining it. After a moment, she sits down too, right up against her pillow, leaving plenty of room for the emptiness to creep up beside her. 

She wishes, hopelessly, for Mulder’s company. He knows better than anyone the feeling of missing a sister, being left behind. Wanting her back, but being even more glad that she’s gone, and never, ever wanting her to return to a home that had hurt them both. 

When she stands, it’s only to change out of her snowy jeans and slide under the covers on her bed. It’s hardly warmer underneath, and she feels the loneliness close in like nightfall, wishing for some sound from downstairs, or from outside. 

She’s picking up the phone and dialing Mulder’s number before she can second guess it. 

“Hello?” He’s out of breath, probably from racing up the stairs to the phone in his room, but it’s him.

“Mulder,” she whispers.

“Dana?” He recognizes her voice immediately, even though she barely does herself. “Is something the –”

“Missy’s gone.”

“Oh, Dana,” he sighs. 

“She didn’t even say goodbye, Mulder.” Dana feels like a little kid, whiny and glossy-eyed, her voice small and pathetic. 

He doesn’t say anything, but she feels his presence, his breathing through the phone comforting and warm.

“It’s almost my birthday, and she left without saying goodbye,” she continues, hating herself for being so selfish.

“I know, baby,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

“Mulder, I just got her back.”

“I know you did,” he soothes. “You haven’t lost her.”

“That’s what she said,” Dana sniffles. “In her note. She said that this isn’t goodbye. But it feels like it is.”

“We’ll find her,” he says. “I promise, Dana. Wherever she’s gone, that’s where we’ll go, too.”

They still haven’t talked about it – leaving together, running away. She still hasn’t told him that she’s planning on it, that there’s no other option that feels right. But he says things like this often, as if he’s letting her know that he’s ready to do it, that he would drop everything and drive her off into the sunset the moment she asked him to. 

He’s her one good thing, her one right choice. And he must know, because he knows her. She would give anything to curl up into his chest and stay there, warm and wanted, recognized and alive. 

“How do you stand it, Mulder?” she whispers. 

“Stand what, baby?” He calls her by pet names more, when she’s soft and weak with him. It warms her, all the way down to her bones.

“Being without her.” 

“I write letters,” he says, knowing who she means. “I talk to her in my head at night. I tell myself every day that she’s better off away from this, even though I selfishly want her with me.”

Dana blinks back tears, pulling the covers up to her chin, the receiver snuggled against her cheek as he talks to her.

“Sometimes, when I don’t know how to face a situation, I imagine how she’d do it instead. I hold down the fort, and I leave space for her in all the places where she’d like to be.”

“What does that mean?” Dana asks quietly.

“I don’t sit in the middle of couches,” he explains. She’s noticed that. “I spend a little while in the empty second bedroom most days, where we put her stuff, just to keep them company. She never lived there, but it feels like her space anyway.”

“Mulder…” Dana murmurs. She imagines him alone in Samantha’s empty room, boxes piled on the floor, his normally bright eyes lost and clouded. She imagines herself sitting on Missy’s twin bed instead of her own, surrounded by her things but out of place anyway. The pillowcase is damp beneath her cheek. 

“When I read a book I think she’ll like, I write footnotes to her in the margins,” he continues. “I have this big, dramatic plan to give her a box full of them someday. All of my copies.”

“You shouldn’t write in books, Mulder,” Dana says, her voice soft. She doesn’t mean it. 

“There’s my Dana,” he says affectionately. “I write in books for you, too, you know.”

“Are they library books?” 

“No,” he replies, mock-affronted. “I’m not an animal, Dana.”

“Are you going to let me see them sometime?” she asks.

“Only if you promise not to get mad that I’ve written in them.”

“Then I guess I’ll never see them.”

“Aw, c’mon, Dana,” he groans dramatically, and she smiles despite herself. 

“It’s in my nature to protest the desecration of sources of knowledge, Mulder.”

There’s a low, friendly rumble of laughter in response, and then both of them fall comfortably quiet. Silence isn’t cold, not when it’s shared with him. 

“I do all of those things for you, too, y’know,” he tells her after a little while. 

“Hm?”

“I talk to you in my head,” he says. Her heart melts. “I leave space for you wherever I go, even when you’re not with me. I even tell myself that you’d be better off without me, some days.”

“Mulder,” she says seriously, snapping out of the soothing trance he’d lulled her into. “Don’t say that.”

“I just think you deserve better than me, that’s all.” He sounds resigned, and she can’t stand it.

“There isn’t anyone better than you for me,” she replies instantly. “I’m not certain of very much, Mulder, but I’m certain of that.

“How can you be so sure?” His voice is low, and she would be worried that he was having second thoughts if she didn’t recognize the tone as insecurity.

“Call it a woman’s intuition, Mulder,” she says, attempting to lighten the mood, and he chuckles humorlessly. 

“No, I mean it,” he says. “How do you know that there won’t be someone better for you, someday?”

“I just know,” Dana tells him. Missy had been right, at the end of her letter. She’s always insisted she doesn’t believe in gut feelings, but it’s always been a lie. “I can feel it, Mulder. I felt it the moment I saw you.”

He sighs shakily. “I want to believe that, Dana.”

“I do believe it.” She tries to convey her sureness, and hopes that he can hear it. “And you trust me, don’t you?”

“Of course I trust you.” 

“Okay, then that’s that.” 

There’s another sigh, this one less nervous. She pictures the creases on his forehead relaxing, and wishes she could lay down against his side, tucked under his arm, listening to his heartbeat until both of them fall asleep. It’s been months, nearing on a year, but she still hasn’t gotten to sleep in the same space as him. Once she does, she knows that she’ll never be able to give it up. 

“Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to promise that you won’t try to leave me,” she says. Even saying it feels painful. “Not even years from now. Not even if you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t – that you don’t _deserve_ me, or us, or this.”

“Dana,” he murmurs, and the reluctance feels like a knife in her chest.

“Please, Mulder.” Her voice feels close to breaking with desperation, even as soft as it is. “I _need_ you.”

“Okay,” he says, after a moment, always needing to be her savior. “Okay. I promise.”

“Okay,” she breathes. 

“I love you _so_ much, Dana,” he tells her insistently, as if he’s scared she won’t believe him. 

“I love you too,” she says. “And I promise that I won’t get mad at you for desecrating books in my name.”

His teary laughter breaks through the heaviness, and she’s smiling again before she can stop herself. 

“I’m holding you to what you said,” she says. 

“Which thing?”

“That we’ll follow Missy. You have to meet her, Mulder. You remind me of her, in all of the best ways.”

“I meant it, Dana,” he says. “We will. And you’ll meet Sam, too. I know you’ll love her.”

*

_February 27th, 1982_

“Are you sure that they won’t change their minds and come back?” 

They’re leaned against the wall at the top of the stairs, and Dana is vibrating with anticipation as he bends to kiss her again, hungrily, in lieu of a response. 

The angle is awkward, but his shoulders are solid and warm under her hands, and his body crowds into her space like he owns it, hands spanning her waist, her hips, the outsides of her thighs. There’s so much heat coiled in her stomach that she’s dizzy with it, any last traces of shame or fear thoroughly driven out purely by his presence. She wants him, and there simply isn’t room for anything else.

“Mulder,” she pants when he lets her breathe. 

“Mm?” he hums, his lips wandering over her neck, and she’s too short, or he’s too tall, and she whimpers in frustration, wanting him closer. 

His palms slip around to cup her rear, over her skirt, and before she knows what’s going on, he’s lifting her easily, her legs wrapping around his waist instinctively as he presses her back against the wall. 

“Better?” he asks, and she nods wordlessly, her hips surging forward as he returns his mouth to her throat. 

“Mulder,” she gasps, remembering what she’d wanted to ask. “Your parents. Are you sure – _oh._ ”

His teeth scrape across her neck, and she bites back a moan, arching against him.

“They’re not coming back,” he reassures her, pressing a kiss to the corner of her jaw. “Their flight left hours ago, and besides, my mom loves weddings.”

She tangles her fingers in his hair and tugs, pulling his mouth away from the soft skin under her ear so she can look at him. His pupils are blown, and he’s grinning at her lopsidedly, adoringly, his big hands kneading her thighs roughly. 

“Then why are we still in the hallway, when we could finally be in a bed?” she asks, conspiratorially, one eyebrow lifting. 

“Dana, are you asking me to take you to bed?” his voice is scandalized, but he’s teasing her, that sloppy smile still spread across his face.

“No, Mulder,” she says, pulling his face down to kiss him again, briefly, before looking him right in the eyes. “I’m _telling_ you to take me to bed.”

He crushes his lips to hers again with a wordless groan, pulling her away from the wall and starting to stumble towards his room. She breaks the kiss after only a few seconds, giggling breathlessly as her shoulder collides with the opposite wall. 

“Mulder, you have to watch where you’re going,” she tells him, cupping his face in both hands as he tries to kiss her again. “No! I don’t want you to fall.”

“Stop being so practical and let me kiss you.”

“Not until you take me to that bed you were so insistent on.”

He huffs out a dramatic sigh, and keeps one arm around her waist as he walks them to his room. 

She’d told him what she wanted for her birthday a week ago in his car, practically aching with desire, grinding shamelessly against the bulge in his jeans. He’d stilled her hips and told her that if she meant it, if she was sure, she deserved a real bed. And then, he’d tossed her into the backseat to bury his head between her legs instead. 

Both of them had gotten lucky with the timing of the wedding back at the Vineyard. Her because she’ll get to take the long-anticipated final step in comfort, and him because he’ll never need to know that she would’ve figured out how to get him inside her within the week, regardless of whether he could find access to a bed.

His eyes are so hungry that she half expects to be tossed onto his mattress and pounced on like prey, but she isn’t surprised at all when he makes every effort to bend over and lay her down gently instead, kissing her forehead as he does, the gesture so sweet and loving it makes her lightheaded. Even so, she foils his plans at the first possible opportunity, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him down with her, refusing to unwind her legs from his waist until they’re both horizontal. There’s a scuffle, his body landing on top of hers as he curses good-naturedly, and she laughs, breathless and grinning, stretching up her neck to kiss his chin. 

“Hi,” he murmurs, smiling down at her, his forearms laid on either side of her head.

“Hi,” she says. 

“I can’t believe I finally get to kiss you while fully horizontal,” he says. “How did I ever manage to land you, Dana? How did I ever get lucky enough to have a girl like you let me go down on you in my damn car?”

“I love you,” she replies, flushed with his praise, watching his eyes widen just a little bit in response. 

Before he can respond, she tugs him down and licks into his mouth, her leg still hooked around his waist as she presses herself up against him. His body is so sturdy, hard lines from his jaw all the way down to the bones of his hips, and she obsesses over the softness of his lips in contrast, the way he melts into her kisses, malleable as clay. 

Even like this, she’s too short, her own hips canting against his stomach, and the knowledge that he’s just as aroused as her is no substitute for feeling it. The ache in her center is too much, too deep, and the limited contact she can find isn’t enough. She reaches down between them blindly, her fingers fumbling with the top of his fly, working at the button until it pops open.

“Hey, wait,” he pants, and she blinks up at him, hazy. “Hey, are you sure you want this?”

“Mm?” She fights with his zipper, lowering her shoulder to reach inside, a futile attempt to get a feel of the hardness she knows is waiting for her. 

“Dana,” he says, and her name brings her part of the way out of her stupor. She curls her hand against his stomach. 

“Wha’s wrong, Mulder?” 

“Nothing, baby, nothing’s wrong, I just want to make sure that you’re really ready,” His face is so earnest, almost nervous, in a way she rarely sees. So different from how impassioned he’d been just moments earlier. “Because if you’re not, we can wait as long as you want. I know there’s a lot of bad stuff you’ve internalized, and –”

“Mulder,” she murmurs, cupping his jaw in her palm and kissing him softly. “I’ve never been so ready for anything in my life.”

“You’re sure?” 

He’s so stubborn, sometimes, and she loves him for it. He’d been stubborn about not letting her persuade him to rip off the band-aid, so to speak, after she’d confessed her longstanding fears about sex months earlier. And she knows, now, that it was right of him to be. But this is different, and it feels as if she’s broken through, thrown the shutters wide open to the night sky and let every star in.

Talking won’t convince him, not when he’s unsure like this, and she can’t find the words regardless. So she bites her lip, and makes a split second decision, following her instincts instead. It hardly takes any effort to roll them over, and she feels absolutely feline as she straddles him and slinks down his body, her nails digging into his chest. And – _oh, God, yes_ – there it is. 

He’s hard enough to hurt, the heat and curve of his cock perfect against her own center, trapped between his abdomen and her own slow grinding. They’ve never been this close, and she’s drunk on the feel of it, sure that his skin must be slick with her wetness too, that it must have soaked through her panties and his boxers already. A few more slow rolls of her hips, and she can feel her lips spreading open to nestle his shaft between, even with the thin layers of fabric in the way.

It isn’t until she hears his groan, low and almost growl-like, that she remembers to look up at him. 

His expression is almost tortured, his chest heaving, and she murmurs his name once. Just the sound is enough to spur him into action, his big palms landing heavily on her hips, crushing her even tighter against him, and she squeals, high pitched and girlish, as the pressure sends a shock up her spine. 

“You’re sure,” he says, low and dark, this time a statement rather than a question, his eyes finding hers. The need in his gaze makes her squirm, and she struggles for coherency, wanting to explain the thought process she’s been working her way through for months now.

“I want to – _ooh_. I want to have you in every single way,” she manages, her breath hitching every time he slides her hips down. “This is just – just another one. All of the – _ah_ – stigma around intercourse is just a result of – _mmm, fuck._ Just a result of patriarchal socio-religious ownership of… of women’s bodies.”

“You’re brilliant, Dana.” He reaches to cup the back of her neck, pulling her head down and leaning up to murmur in her ear. “And I’m impressed that you managed to get all of that out. But I’m going to make you come _so_ hard you can’t even put together a sentence.”

“Just once?” She can’t help teasing him, swept away by the victory of persuading him and the thrill of anticipation.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve to be teasing me when you’re this fucking wet and needy,” he husks, but he’s smiling, playing with her. The flush travels down her neck to her chest, and she can feel herself get even wetter. She loves him cocky. “Look at you. I could have you any way I wanted, and you’d fall apart the second I told you to.” 

“Prove it,” she breathes, involuntarily clenching so tightly that everything between her hips aches.

She’s on her back again before she knows it, a wild laugh pushing its way out of her chest, the vertigo making her dizzy and his tongue in her mouth making her dizzier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's winter! Don't have much to say about this chapter. All my dates are accurate, but I have no idea whether there was actually a massive snowstorm in the winter of '81. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @kittenscully, where this is also being posted. Please share thoughts via comments/tags/asks/messages, they really make this whole thing feel worthwhile.


	6. Spring, again

_March 1st, 1982._

When Dana wakes, it’s to the gentle press of lips atop her head.

His chest is bare where her nose tucks against it, rising and falling gently, and she opens her mouth to breathe him in. Hers is bare, too, breasts flush against his stomach, and his palm is huge and heavy on her spine, hand spread open to span the width of her ribcage. 

She nuzzles closer, the coarse hair over his sternum tickling her cheeks, and squeezes her arm around his middle.

“Good morning,” he rumbles.

“Mmm.”

It only takes her a moment to notice that he’s hard against her hip. She hides her smile in his chest, feels him place another kiss on the crown of her head. The surprise, she realizes, isn’t that he’s aroused. It’s that for once, both of them are too comfortable, warm and languid and intertwined under the covers, to do anything about it. 

Much like sex, waking up with him is even better the second time. She hadn’t planned on returning to his blessedly empty house after Sunday’s family obligations, even though she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the way he’d felt inside of her all day – with the ceremony of the first time done with, she could convince him, now, to take her in the backseat. 

But she couldn’t fall asleep in his arms in the backseat, not in the middle of winter. She couldn’t spend the night wrapped up in his warmth there. She couldn’t wake up to the sun pushing past the gap in the curtains, snuggle into his chest, and see the entirety of her future spread out in front of her, in mornings just like this one, when she closed her eyes. 

So she’d claimed last minute study plans with a friend who she never sees anymore, gotten into his car at their meeting spot a mile down the road, and begged him to take her home.

She wonders, sleepily, whether waking up next to him will keep on getting better, just like the sex does. Everything improves with practice, even though they seem to be naturals at both of the things in question.

“Baby,” he says, and she feels his voice more than she hears it. 

“Mmm?”

“Don’t you want to know what time it is?”

“Do I?” The words are thick with sleep, lazy on her tongue.

“It’s Monday,” he tells her, his voice low.

“Mm.” 

He smells like salt, like nighttime. Like dreams, saline and heavy, the taste of herself on his tongue. Like heat, the kind that sinks into her bones and stays there. Like he won’t ever leave. She tilts her head up, buries her face in the hollow of his throat, kisses the column of his neck sleepily. 

“Dana,” he murmurs, his other hand sliding down from under the pillow to smooth over her hair. “It’s _Monday_. You have school.”

She opens her eyes, freezes in place. 

“There you are.” He sounds amused. 

It’s Monday. 

“Oh,” she sighs. “What time ‘s it?”

“Half past six,” he says, and she starts. Fifteen minutes after she’d meant to wake up. “I turned off the alarm right before it could sound.”

“Mulder!” The protest is halfhearted, laden with drowsiness. 

“You were so sound asleep, Dana,” he tells her. “And besides, I know you press snooze at least once. I just did it for you.”

“You should’ve woken me,” she mumbles. She doesn’t mean it. 

“Did you know that you snore? Just a little bit?” 

At that, she manages to pull away enough to look at him, affronted. 

“Mulder, I do _not._ ”

“It’s the cutest sound I’ve ever heard,” he says. “I don’t know how I’m going to sleep without it.”

He’s smiling at her, starry-eyed with affection, his hair as tousled and messy as if she’d had her hands in it all night. She can feel her chest soften more with every passing second, and she can’t remember for the life of her what she’d been attempting to argue about.

“What?” he asks as she stares at him. “Do I have something on my face?”

She loves him so, so much.

Reaching up to cup his jaw, she tugs his face down until he’s close enough to kiss, sweet and chaste, just a brush of lips to avoid morning breath. 

“No,” she says. “I just don’t know how I’m ever going to sleep without you again.”

His eyes go dreamy, and his lips press to her forehead. 

“I’d ask you to move in with me, if I could,” he admits. 

She would say yes, without even thinking about it beforehand. But he already knows that. She closes her eyes, smooths her palm over the plane of his cheek.

“Ask me to run away with you instead, then,” she whispers, looking up at him.

Saying it aloud isn’t any harder than saying it in her head, like she’s been doing since the first time she kissed him, and he stared at her, awestruck, after. It must be because he already knows she’ll say yes to this, too.

“Run away with me, Dana,” he says, easily, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. One giant leap. Behind him, the morning light is creeping through the curtains, his face backlit in pink and gold.

“Okay.” 

And there’s no butterflies in her stomach, no shaky hands as she touches him, no uncertainty in the back of her mind, no kick of adrenaline thrumming through her bones. 

There’s only the brilliant, sunlit smile on his face, and the feeling that the world has finally come fully into focus.

“We can hold out until June,” he says, almost a question, and she nods. 

“June.”

“You’re really not going to leave me, are you?”

And it isn’t a question, more a statement, an observation. The realization she’s been waiting for, that she won’t give up on him. His eyes are wondering and shy, his knuckles brushing gently over her cheek. 

“I love you,” she reminds him softly, turning her head to nuzzle his fingers. 

*

_March 28th, 1982._

The sight of Paul in Missy’s seat makes Dana too upset to eat. She curls her fingers around her cross instinctively, and lets it go as if she’s been burned the moment she realizes what she’s doing. 

“We’re so glad you could join us, Paul,” Maggie simpers as she lays the food on the table. Her parents have been working double time to please him since Missy’s departure, as if they’re scared he’ll equate her with her sister. 

“The pleasure is all mine, ma’am,” he says, every bit the good, respectful boyfriend. 

It’s all bullshit, all an act. Everyone is a puppet at the Scully family dinner table, and today is the first time in months that Paul hasn’t leered upon seeing her. She plays the shy, naive virgin every time he tries to kiss her, and for the first time in her life, she’s grateful that she’s meant to think of her sexuality as shameful. 

Two days ago, she’d made an attempt to mention an interest in medicine over dinner. He’d smiled condescendingly and told her that her caring instinct would make her an excellent mother, as casually and conversationally as one might comment on the food. She’s heard comments like it her whole life, but coming from him, it had felt like a threat, a warning. _You will bear my children._

She watches her mother smile at him, and the fury curls in her stomach like nausea. _No. I will not._

Her father says Grace. She lifts her fork when he’s done out of habit, and then Paul’s hand is on her wrist, prompting her to set it back down. 

“If you don’t mind, sir, I’ve got something I’d like to say before we eat,” Paul speaks up.

“Go ahead, young man.” He doesn’t seem surprised in the least. From the neutral look on his face, Dana would almost think that he’d expected the interruption.

“Mr. and Mrs. Scully, I’ve been lucky enough to date your daughter for six months now,” Paul says. Dana stares. She knows he’s talking about her, but it doesn’t feel like it. He doesn’t have the faintest idea what it means to date her. “In that time, I’ve come into my own as a man and as a Catholic. And it’s shown me firsthand what a good woman can accomplish, if only I let her in.”

It hits her the moment before it happens, a gut-punch feeling, bile rising in her throat. 

Paul’s chair slides back. She watches him as he drops down on one knee, as if in slow motion. There’s a gasp from Maggie, theatrical and delighted. He withdraws a box from his pocket, and pops it open to reveal a ring, cold and unforgiving diamond glittering in the unsteady overhead light. 

“Dana Katherine Scully,” he says. Her name sounds wrong when he says it, doesn’t feel like hers anymore. She wants to take it away from him, snatch it back and hide it away. “Proverbs 18:22 tells us: ‘To find a wife is to find happiness, a favor granted by the Lord.’ Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

There’s total silence. Dana watches herself as if from above, clasped hands in her lap, the wrong boyfriend proposing marriage beside her. His shadow cast long and dark on the carpet, moving ever so slightly as the overhead light swings uneasily to and fro. Her father’s expectant, guarded smile. Her mother’s open mouth. Charlie, quiet and wide-eyed as always.

All she can think is _Mulder._

He’s told her so many times that it won’t be a betrayal, that she’ll have to say yes. He’s known from the start that this relationship with Paul is a sham, a convenient veil to cover their real one – the thing that’s kept them truly safe for the past six months. But still, the thought of committing herself to someone other than him is sickening, no matter how much of a farce it is. 

This whole time, her family hasn’t suspected a thing. With Missy gone, she’s the good daughter, just as she’d wanted to be for so many years, and all she has to do is pretend for a little longer. She and Mulder have real plans now, to run and never look back, all dependent on her act. _You’re pulling the wool over their eyes, baby_ , Mulder had marveled, his lips against the back of her hand. _That’s what they get for underestimating you._

Missy had dropped the act upon proposal. But Missy was never as good at hiding her feelings, and she could run with nothing to lose. 

“Yes,” she sighs, forcing her features into a wide smile, baring her front teeth, white and wooden like the marionette that she is. “Yes, Paul, of _course._ ”

The ring slips into place on her finger, and she lets him pull her to her feet and place a kiss on her cheek. He hasn’t a clue that she’s the one pulling the strings. Faintly, she’s aware of her mother bursting into excited applause, and she holds her breath, so as not to breathe in the scent of his aftershave that makes her skin crawl every time. 

“It’ll be a summer wedding,” Paul declares. “A Saturday, in June. Won’t that be nice, Dana?”

She nods in fake enthusiasm, knowing he would prefer that she not say a word. He kisses her cheek again. She regrets her increasing inability to blush, her responses thoroughly automated and mechanical, and wonders at the fact that she feels absolutely no worry, none of the panic and terror that she’d thought she would. 

It’s not even difficult to smile her way through the rest of the meal. The ring settled uncomfortably on her finger is just another cross to bear, like the one she’s worn with distaste for so long, and now, she knows when she’ll be able to shed them both. Inside, she can feel the secret growing, taking root between her hips and spreading up into her chest, green and lush, new life under the pale dead wood. 

When Paul departs, she takes the cheek kisses from her parents in stride, and makes her way upstairs, dialing Mulder’s number as soon as she closes the bedroom door.

He picks up on the first ring.

“Dana,” he greets her, and she smiles. Of course he would know. 

And just like that, the name is hers again. Her throat is full, flowers blossoming in her windpipe. 

“I guess I don’t need to say that it’s me,” she says.

“I beat you to it,” he chuckles.

“Well, it happened,” she sighs, staring down at the ring. 

“What did?”

“Paul proposed.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t sound surprised or upset, and Dana is relieved anyway, even though she hadn’t expected him to. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, actually,” she says. “I didn’t even panic. It’s been a lot easier, pretending, now that we have a plan.”

“I’m only sorry we didn’t make one sooner.”

“We have to go in June, just like we said,” she tells him. “That’s when Paul wants to get married. A Saturday in June.”

“We’ll go in June,” he promises. “I love you.”

“The ring is so ugly, Mulder,” she sighs. 

“Take it off, then.”

“He has no taste.”

“Well, he does like you,” Mulder points out, and she suppresses a smile. “I have to credit him for that.”

“I love you too,” she says belatedly. 

“I never get tired of hearing you say that,” he says. Dana can hear his grin over the phone. 

“I should tell you more,” she murmurs. 

“I’m listening right now,” he hints. “I’m quite literally all ears.”

“Don’t push your luck,” she teases him. In the background, she can hear a muffled shout, assumedly his mother. 

“I gotta go, the Mulder family dinner awaits.” He sounds resigned, and she sighs sympathetically. 

“Okay, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye, Dana.”

“Wait, one more thing,” she rushes.

“What?”

“I love you.”

She hangs up before he can, still smiling. Clicking on her lamp, she catches sight of herself in the mirror, her cheeks flushed pink and her eyes sparkling just like his always do. She slips off the engagement ring without even looking at it, and sets it on her bedside table. 

*

_April 15th, 1982_

“Mulders.” 

“Mulder, it’s me.”

“Dana, you’re saving my life.”

“Well, I knew _that_.”

“No, I mean it. My father was trying to talk to me about my ‘future’.”

“Oh, that’s never good.”

“It’s nice that he’s pretending to care, but the problem is that I already have a future planned out. I just can’t tell him about it.”

“That’s actually what I was calling you about.”

“Oh?”

“We have a wedding date set.”

“When?”

“June 12th.”

“So that’s our run by date.” 

“Yes. It might be a good idea to run on that day, actually, since I believe you’ll get your paycheck the day before.” 

“Hang on. Lemme look.”

“Mulder, I’ve got it marked in my planner.”

“Yep, you’re right.”

“Shocking.”

“You’re lucky I’m in love with you. Otherwise I might be wounded by the serrated blade of your sarcastic nature.”

“You’re lucky I need you as an escape route, otherwise _I_ might be wounded by your cruelty.”

“Very funny. Didn’t you just tell me a few days ago about your plans to be nicer to me?”

“I’m rethinking them.”

“Is that so?”

“After further consideration, I’ve concluded that being nice to you would inflate your ego to disastrous proportions.”

“Are you sure you don’t just think I’m cute when I pretend to be offended?” 

“Well, I…” 

“Gotcha.” 

“What gave me away?”

“I don’t have a huge ego. That was obviously an exaggeration. A bold faced lie, if you will.”

“Your behavior last Saturday would indicate otherwise.”

“Hey, that was justified! You try getting someone off twice in fifteen minutes and see if you’re able to be modest afterwards.”

“Unless you magically attain different genitalia, that’s never going to be something I’ll be able to try.”

“I feel like I’m being mocked for my dick.”

“Don’t be absurd, Mulder. I would never mock my favorite of your physical features.” 

“And here I was thinking you had a thing for my eyes.”

“Mulder, I can’t believe I’m going to leave someone at the altar. Young, God-fearing Dana would be scandalized.”

“Well, that’s certainly one way to make a statement about your views on the church.”

“I would take the engagement ring with me to pawn it if I wasn’t trying to act in accordance with some moral code.”

“I don’t think Paul deserves the benefit of your moral code.”

“He did make another comment yesterday that made consider stealing from him outright.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“It was about the sinfulness of using contraception.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“I’ll say. I’m sure you’ve noticed that Martha Byrne has stopped bearing her husband children in the past few years.”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“Well, she’s got four boys and a girl, all between the ages of six and twelve. She hasn’t been pregnant since. It seems that Paul heard a rumor about the reasons for that, and they aren’t that Martha Byrne has stopped performing her wifely duties.”

“Please tell me that he didn’t actually say ‘wifely duties’.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that.”

“Ugh, I’m gonna be sick.”

“Mulder, the woman had five children with barely a break in between, and my fiance –”

“Oh, don’t call him that.”

“– My _not_ -husband-to-be thinks that she should repent for using contraception. And continue to perform her wifely duties without.” 

“Dana?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not going to do anything rash here.”

“Good.”

“But I think it’s very important that you know that if I were to ever meet your not-husband-to-be, I would shove my foot so far up his ass he would taste leather for the rest of his very short, thoroughly miserable life.”

“Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t stop you.”

“I doubt you’d be able to, even if you tried.”

“Just pretend that I reacted with outrage. So I can keep up appearances as a woman with a moral code who doesn’t enjoy the thought of her boyfriend beating up a misogynist.”

“Done.”

“Thank you.”

“I also want you to know that I would never insist you have children, unless you decide you want them. Or insist that you do anything, for that matter. It’s 1982, not 1882.”

“I know you wouldn’t, but thank you for saying so. I did used to want them – children, I mean – but recently the idea makes me a little bit sick to my stomach.”

“We’re not even in our twenties yet, Dana. Do you have any idea how much life we have ahead of us?”

“Mulder, I’m so impatient to get to it.”

“To what?”

“Life. With you.”

“Don’t say that, you’ll make me get sappy.”

*

_May 1st, 1982._

Ever since the weekend they’d spent there, Mulder’s room feels more like his. 

Of course, it’s become increasingly more comfortable each time she’s visited. First, there was the addition of the star chart from the Cosmosphere, taped now to the ceiling, and the tacky bobble head alien on the side table that she’d given him for New Year’s – _not Christmas, or Hanukkah, Mulder, I pay attention_ – certainly didn’t hurt. 

But there’s something different, now, about the way that he looks when he sinks down to sit on the edge of his bed. His posture remains unfortunate, but his shoulders don’t slump like they used to. The light doesn’t go out of his eyes. As she sits beside him, he doesn’t seem resigned to the time they’ll have to spend here instead of out and about or in his backseat.

When she’s feeling sappy, Dana supposes that two nights spent sleeping together in any room could accomplish that. After all, she’s gained a fondness herself for his east-facing window, his sky blue sheets, the scent of him covering every surface. When she’s feeling cocky, she gives the memory of herself naked in his bed all the credit.

The plan is to call Missy’s new number for the first time from his house, instead of her own, as Missy had requested in the letter that finally arrived the day before. The excitement has been buzzing in her stomach ever since. But she can spare a moment more to kiss Mulder, going up on her knees on the bed and framing his face with her hands.

He’s satisfactorily breathless when she lets him go, grasping at her hands as she makes to pull away and leaning forward to chase her mouth. She’ll never get tired of the sight of him like this, fawning and smitten, soft as the worn cotton of his t shirt. The press of his lips is sweet as spring when she lets him kiss her again with a chuckle, his thumbs pressing into her wrists as if he’s checking her pulse. 

“ _Mul_ der,” she sighs. His nose tucks against hers. 

“ _Da_ na.” He matches the lilt of her voice softly, her mockingbird. 

Her chest swells, like a yawn, and she allows herself another moment in his space, heartbeat steady and quickened under his thumbs. When she presses a final, gentle kiss to his upper lip, she feels him smile. 

Missy’s new phone number is an area code she doesn’t recognize, but she already has it memorized nonetheless. Tucking the receiver under her chin, she leans over to dial. Beside her, Mulder fidgets, repositioning himself repeatedly against the pillows until he’s flat on his back, fingers tapping on his chest restlessly. The phone starts to ring, and Mulder sighs, shifting again onto his side and laying his head in her lap. 

“Hello?” It’s Missy, and Dana gasps despite herself.

“Missy,” she breathes. 

“Dana, is that you?”

“Yes,” Dana says, nodding even though Missy obviously can’t see. “Yes, sorry, it’s me.”

“Oh, I’ve missed you so much,” Missy says. For once, she doesn’t sound like she’s trying to keep quiet. 

“I miss you too,” Dana says. She knows her sister’s voice by heart, but there’s something so different about it now, carefree and bright – higher pitched, like when they were children.

“How are you? Are you calling from Mulder’s?” 

Dana catches her breath. Missy’s never said his name before – neither of them have, not once. It was as if speaking it aloud would make it too real to manage, impossible to hide away any longer. A secret too big to keep, rattling around in the floorboards until someone other than the two of them heard.

“Yes,” she manages to say. “Yeah, I’m calling from Mulder’s. He’s right here, actually.”

“I want to talk to him,” Missy announces.

“You – you do?”

“Not right now, we have more catching up to do,” she laughs. 

Missy is in Chincoteague, Virginia. “Just for now,” she says. “I’m going to go further north. Maybe D.C. or Baltimore, for a start.”

Of course, Dana knows why she’s gone to Chincoteague. She remembers calling Missy ‘Misty’ for months when they were eight and nine, how it had made the both of them giggle. Dana had lost her own childish fascination along the way, had stopped dreaming of horses and of the sea, but Missy had remained dreamy, even underneath the resignation to her fate. 

“Are there ponies?” she asks anyway, and smiles at Missy’s laugh. 

There aren’t as many as Missy had thought there’d be. But she has a little apartment above a convenience store, and a job downstairs, and she’ll be making her way to a real city in a month or so, once she’s saved up some more money. 

And Dana doesn’t need to ask if she’s happy to know the answer, but she does anyway. Her fingers trace through Mulder’s hair, play across his strong jaw. 

“I’m happier than I’ve ever been,” Missy tells her, and Dana blinks back tears. “Are you?”

“I’m engaged to the wrong man,” Dana says evasively. Mulder’s face nuzzles into her stomach and she palms the back of his head. “I have to sneak around with the right one, and I lie to our whole family every day.”

“But are you happy?”

Mulder looks up at her, his brow furrowed with concern. He can only hear one half of the conversation, she remembers, and she thumbs gently over his cheek and smiles down at him, despite herself, when he turns his head to kiss her fingers. 

“Yes,” Dana whispers. “The happiest I’ve ever been.”

And there’s his smile, sunny and glorious. She bends to kiss him chastely on the bridge of his nose, so that he’ll scrunch it up and crinkle his eyes at her. 

“Alright, put him on the phone,” Missy demands. “I know he’s right there, I can hear it in your voice.” 

Dana grins. “Okay.”

A hand over the receiver, and she taps on Mulder’s forehead, getting him to meet her eye.

“She wants to talk to you,” she murmurs.

“Me?” 

“Do you see anyone else around who I could be talking to, Mulder?”

He flops onto his back, and reaches up for the phone, his head cradled atop her thighs.

“Be nice to him, Missy,” Dana tells her sister perfunctorily. She isn’t worried in the slightest.

“I’m always nice.”

With a chuckle, she hands the phone over. Mulder looks oddly nervous, and she realizes abruptly that this is the closest he’s come to actually meeting any of her family. She strokes wisps of hair back from his forehead tenderly, warmth sinking into her palm. 

“Hello,” he says, unsurely. 

Dana can hear the cadence of Missy’s voice, but it’s impossible to make out any words, and it only frustrates her further to try. With a sigh, she resumes playing with Mulder’s hair, and watches his face shift from uncertainty into a hesitant smile. 

“I don’t think I could if I tried,” he says. Missy must be threatening him, still in that bright, happy voice.

Another pause, and then, “No, it’s definitely me who’s the lucky one.” 

“Mulder,” Dana murmurs, despite herself. He blinks up at her, lazy and adoring, mouths _Dana_. 

*

_May 22nd, 1982_

The windows are rolled down, and the sunset spreads across the flat, empty plains, honey gold over the tall grass. It isn’t night yet, but there are stars flashing behind Dana’s eyelids every time she lets them fall shut, the press of his cock so deep inside her that she barely has room to fill her lungs with air.

And it doesn’t hurt, hasn’t ever hurt, not even the very first time. But, oh, it _aches_. Like muscles worn into exhaustion, like skin rubbed raw, like hot water that washes her clean. They breathe together, and it aches. 

It should feel reckless, sex in the front seat before dark, but in this moment, they could be the only two people in the world. Dana is sure that they’re the only two that matter.

He thumbs over her nipples, pebbled against the cotton of her dress. The sensations overload her sluggish brain, and she gasps and arches, winces and sighs at the change of angle. 

“There you go,” he soothes her. His palms run across her arms, and he scoops them up, laying her elbows on his shoulders. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

Heart in her throat, Dana nods, forces herself to look at him as he catches her chin with his knuckles. His face is blurry through the sheen of tears, an involuntary response to the closeness, the fullness. There’s no way to catch her breath, no way to focus her eyes on his, no way to get used to the push-pull or the stretch. She doesn’t want to get used to it. 

“Beautiful,” he murmurs. She bucks her hips against his, a single, needy movement, and the tendon in his neck bulges with tension, a desperate attempt to stay still until he knows she’s alright. 

“Mul’er,” she manages, her breath hitching. She’s so wet she can hear it. 

“You good, baby?” His voice is low.

“Uh-huh.” 

“Doesn’t hurt?”

There hadn’t been any prep, not this time, other than the condom rolled down and her hand pumping him, once, twice. She’s too greedy for that now, too impatient to wait for his fingers to open her up first. In the back of her mind, she’s aware of his concern, the furrow between his brows. He doesn’t need to worry. He could never hurt her, especially not like this.

“Uh-uh.” She shakes her head. His hair is soft, and she rolls it between her fingertips, presses her mouth clumsily against his bristled jaw, lacking the coordination to kiss him right. 

When his hands find her breasts again, she starts rolling her hips in earnest, lifting herself away from him just enough to feel the friction and then letting herself slide back. The effort makes her breathless, and whimpers escape her on every downstroke.

“I can’t believe I found you,” he says, his eyes distant and awestruck, as if he’s finally uncovered the answer he’s been searching for – _to life, the universe, and everything,_ he would say. If she has anything to say about it, he’ll never have to search for anything alone again. “I wake up every morning sure that I’ve made you up in my head.”

When they’re joined, he talks to her like she’s his confessor, the words coming as if he doesn’t even know he’s speaking them aloud. For her part, she can’t even string together a sentence most times, thoughts collecting and separating like raindrops on glass in her head. She forgets what he tells her even as she hoards his compliments like a magpie, glittering and precious in her chest.

“You deserve to be painted,” he grunts, and she braces her elbows, uses the leverage to lift herself higher. “I’ll learn, Dana, I’ll learn just for you. I’ll fill galleries. I’ll devote my life to the study of your neck and your eyes and your – you’re so fucking tight, you know that, how do you _do_ that every time, I can’t ever replicate it and it drives me insane –”

And she is, _so_ tight, each of her own thrusts making her whine, a new stretch every time she takes him deeper inside. And there’s his hand pushing under her skirt, big and hot on her hip, the splay of his fingers on her thigh, and just the idea of him touching her so close to where she’s pulsing for his attention makes her slicker yet. 

“My clothes all smell like you,” he says, his other hand pawing at her neckline, dragging it down until her breast is exposed to the cool air, the strap falling down her shoulder. “My fingers smell like you for hours after.” Those same fingers close around her nipple, and she squeaks, her hips working faster. 

“I can’t sleep most nights, not without you,” he pants. She knows that one, and she can’t, either. In just a few weeks, they’ll never sleep alone again, and she can barely wait. “When I do, I wake up convinced you’ll be next to me, because everything about you finds its way into my dreams.”

The sensations compound, building until she can barely stand it, his knuckles tugging on the sensitive flesh of her nipple. When his other thumb slides down to settle between her folds, she cries out his name, pleading for something, anything. 

“Too much?” It barely registers as a question, and she nods, aware that she’s pulling on his hair more roughly than she ought to.

His thumb starts to move away, and she manages a desperate _no,_ shaking her head, unable to keep her eyes open for longer than a few seconds. 

“Don’t stop?” 

“Don’t stop,” she gasps. 

The pad of his finger flattens across the sensitive bud, and she keens, rocking into the dual stimulation, riding the white hot wave to the very top.

“Do you know how I know you’re real?” He asks, and the words are muddled together in her head, sparks of pleasure coursing up through her stomach. 

He doesn’t wait for a response, ducking to kiss her mouth deeply, all tongue and teeth and desire. She’s so close to the edge she can taste it, in the salt on his lips and the mind-numbing pressure against her center.

“My imagination never does you justice,” he says, punctuating the statement with another kiss.“Every time I see you, you’re so much better than I remember. Every time I touch you, the precedent gets set again, higher than before.”

“Mulder, please,” she manages, and his lips crush against hers again.

“I couldn’t have made you up, Dana,” he tells her, the words low and ground out in her ear as she grinds herself into him. “I never would’ve given myself something as good as you.”

There’s a single, rough movement of his thumb, and then she falls apart. His mouth covers hers, swallowing her scream, and he doesn’t let her go, doesn’t move his fingers away. There are galaxies behind her eyelids, pulsing and endless, more color and light than she’s ever been able to find in all their nights stargazing. She never wants him to stop touching her. 

When she becomes aware of herself again, it’s because of his hands clasped around her hips, attempting to lift her off of his still-hard cock. 

“No,” she gasps, blinking her eyes open. In the back of her mind, she’s aware of the irrationality of it, but every fiber of her being rejects the impending separation nonetheless, as if an end to their joining means an end to having him at all. 

“No?” His pupils are so dilated that there’s barely a ring of color around them, and the rasp of his breathing is needy and strained.

“No,” she repeats. Winding her arms around his shoulders, she relaxes her tensed muscles with effort, letting herself sink down until he fills her so deeply her eyes water again at the rawness and sensitivity inside. “Like this.”

“Aren’t you –”

“Please,” she murmurs, before he can get out the question, meeting his gaze.

His knees shift apart, thighs tensing under hers as he braces his feet, and then he’s holding her tightly as he starts to thrust. Groaning softly, she buries her face in his neck, clinging to him and pressing kisses into his sweat-slicked skin. 

And she is sore, just as he’d been about to ask, but it doesn’t matter. Every stroke is perfect, her limbs full of molten heat, the nerve endings inside vibrating with pleasure as he moves, chasing his own climax with his hands framing her hips to keep her still. 

With every jump of his pulse under her lips, she realizes all over again that this is what sex should be like, what life should be like, that maybe she’s been the one searching all this time, and not him. That maybe she’s the one who can stop looking now, and find herself home, finally, pressed against him as he takes what he needs from her, gasping his adoration into her hair.

_I love you,_ she thinks, half-convinced in her dazed state that he can read her mind. _I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you_ –

His groan is throaty as he comes, his hips stuttering, and this time, she’s the one who doesn’t let go, holding onto him even as he starts to soften. She’d promised never to give up on him, she remembers faintly, and as he nuzzles against her, she promises silently never to let go of him, either.

“I love you, too,” he tells her hoarsely, and it’s only then that she realizes she was repeating it out loud all along. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last long chapter – next is just the epilogue – and my personal favorite. Thank you for sticking with me and reading, it means the world. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @kittenscully, where this is also being posted. Any feedback via tags/comments/asks/messages is very much appreciated, and truly keeps me going.


	7. Epilogue

_June 12th, 1982_

On the evening of the final day, Dana lays out the purchases from the roadside store atop the map spread open on the dashboard. Sunflower seeds and yogurt covered raisins, two cherry cokes and a pack of spearmint gum. Her whole world is in this car, assembled in two suitcases and a duffel bag in the trunk, and a collection of snacks recently purchased with cash from her life savings.

Well, not quite her whole world. Outside the window, he’s fiddling with the gas pump, and she watches him, the smile that won’t seem to leave her face starting to make her cheeks hurt. She reaches over, pushes on the button to lower the window on the driver’s side. 

“Need some help out there, hot stuff?”

“You’d better not be eating all my sunflower seeds before I get a chance to have any,” he warns her, his back still facing the car.

She giggles and reaches for the bag, tearing it open and stealing a few just so he’ll laugh about it when he sees.

“Then get back in here and kiss me so I don’t have to,” she calls.

She’d left the wedding night lingerie in a heap on the bed, beside her engagement ring and her cross, discarded for good at long last. His Roswell, New Mexico t-shirt suits her just fine braless, the sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, her hair tangled and messy from the wind down her back. The cutoff shorts she’d made herself are mobile and freeing, worn with use, and she props her foot up on the seat comfortably. 

Mulder leans in the driver’s side window, eyeing the sunflower seeds suspiciously, and she laughs. His gaze finds her immediately, and he is visibly lovestruck at the sight of her, hovering with blue twilight behind him and fixing her in place with the sweetest of smiles. 

“I won’t be a minute,” he promises, indicating the shop with a jerk of his thumb. 

She nods. Watching him walk away feels blissfully temporary. 

Flipping down the visor in front of her, she meets her own gaze in the little mirror. Her face is freckled, cheeks pink from sun and excitement, and the curly wisps of hair in front of her ears fuzz from humidity. There’s not a speck of the makeup she’d have worn if she’d stayed to get married, the infrequently used kit abandoned in her parents’ bathroom, and her lips are chapped from too many kisses at the side of the road, from biting down on them as she stares at her other half in the driver’s seat. The sight is unfamiliar, a side of herself she’s never let out so freely before, but it feels right, looks right. 

It looks like her, bright eyed and wild, bursting with life and not bothering to contain it.

When it gets darker, too late to drive, Mulder will attempt chivalry, suggesting a motel stop, a bed and shower. She’ll remind him of their plans to save money for D.C., and kiss him for being sweet. They’ll recline the passenger’s seat all the way back, and she’ll curl up against him, burrow into his chest. Tucked away in a nest of Mexican blankets and warmth, they’ll sleep soundly for the first time in months with the night breeze on their faces, breathing together, surrounded on all sides by windows and the endless sky just outside. 

He’s dropping into the driver’s seat with a declaration of her name before she’s had a chance to notice his approach, and she scrambles to fit their drinks into the cupholders, the snacks dropped in the glove compartment as he turns on the car. 

“Ready?” He asks, grinning rakishly, her outlaw, her hitchhiker. 

“Nope.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then he catches on, eyes lighting up. He’s on her in seconds, scooping up her face in his big hands, mouth hot and demanding on hers, and she gasps against his lips. This is what she’s been waiting for, a kiss to claim her in public, where anyone could see, any secretive shame left dead or dying on the miles of Kansas highway behind them. 

“Ready,” she says, breathless, when they come up for air.

As Mulder pulls out of the gas station, her fingers go to her throat on instinct, searching for the cross that’s dragged her steadily closer to six feet under for so many years. She comes up empty, and smiles. Instead, she lays her hand on his between them, a new habit to replace the old one. 

The blacktop rolls beneath them, the open road pointing them east, towards the morning. Behind them, Kansas is level and endless, a final flatline, heartbeats dying out into silence. They will not go back. They aren’t ready to die, and she can’t imagine that they ever will be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it. Thank you all so much for reading, and for the lovely feedback. Writing something as substantial as this fic is something that I was unsure I'd ever be able to accomplish, and the end result means a lot to me. It's sad to close it, but it's time. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @kittenscully, where this whole fic is also posted. There'll be a masterpost later tonight. I also theoretically take small, fluff and smut-centric, canon-adjacent prompts, although I can't promise anything. Please let me know what you thought via comments/tags/asks/messages.


End file.
